


Snow White

by Eiserne



Category: Hellsing
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, Alternate Universe - Snow White Fusion, Drama, F/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-21
Updated: 2016-09-24
Packaged: 2018-05-28 03:44:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 24
Words: 91,780
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6314029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eiserne/pseuds/Eiserne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Once upon a time, a queen wished for a child who was as white as snow, as red as blood, and as black as ebony. Be careful what you wish for. AU. AxI.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

_Hellsing_  belongs to Hirano Kouta.

 

xx

**Prologue**

xx

_Come, come! Let me spin you a story._

_Once upon a time, and what a time it was!_

_In the middle of winter, a queen sat embroidering under an ebony window. She pricked her finger on her needle and, wanting to stanch the bleeding, pressed her wound on the pile of snow outside. Together the glistening red blood, virgin white snow, and sturdy ebony frame made such a pleasing picture that she wished, without thinking, for a child who was as white as snow, as red as blood, and as black as ebony._

_An innocent wish it was, that she forgot soon after._

_A forgotten wish it was, that the Devil granted!_

xx

xx

There had been a royal birth.

Or had there? The people were not sure. A steward confirmed a while later that the queen had given birth to a prince, but that only increased the suspicions of the populace. Where, then, were the fanfares? Where were the cheers? Where was the joyous celebration that normally marked such good news? The king was nowhere to be seen. The air around the palace was thick with tension.

It was unsettling. Rumors spread. "Perhaps the baby was stillborn," fretted a woman.

"Nay, I bet he is deformed somehow," a man asserted.

A grocer shook his head. "It could be that he is simply in bad health."

"Could it be the queen who is in danger?" another whispered anxiously.

And one distinct voice spoke the truth. "Or perhaps, the child is cursed."

Everybody turned to the speaker. He was quite an intimidating man in a cassock, with deep creases on his forehead and a scar on his left cheek. His eyes were guarded by the gleam of light reflecting off his glasses. A cross bounced off his chest.

"The child is cursed," the man repeated. "There be an evil in the castle."

"Now, Father," someone laughed nervously, "That's quite a statement to make!"

"I only say what I know," the priest growled. "Calamity will befall this land."

The citizens twittered amongst themselves. "Aren't you going to do anything?" someone else beseeched.

They gaped in astonishment when the priest merely cackled. "No, I don't think so. Not yet. It won't be fun to dispose of just yet…I like a challenge, see."

He lumbered away intoning the Holy Scripture under his breath. The crowd moved hurriedly out of his way. They saw him go as far as the bell tower, when suddenly he was not there at all. There was no trace of him save for the loose leaves of the Bible flying in the wind.

There had been no wind that day.

xx

xx

_There had been no wind that day._

_The queen, the poor thing, she was inconsolable. No one could calm her, not her doctors or nurses or maids. She was still weak from the delivery, but was sitting up in bed with the covers drawn to her chin, shuddering and gasping and pupils erratic. Cowering, she was, from a bundle of blankets at her feet. She refused to touch it. Oh, how she loathed to touch it!_

_Enter the king. He saw the state of his wife and rushed to her side. "What is it, love? What has happened?"_

_She dissolved into tears again. "The child…the child…"_

_The king inquired, "What of the child?"_

_She pointed a shaking finger at the bundle. It wriggled and disclosed itself. A maid shrieked, a physician sucked in his breath, the king dropped his jaw and all watched with transfixed horror the sight unfolding before them._

_First came out arms that would have been like any other baby's arms had the skin not been_ as white as snow _. Next peeked out a tuft of hair that was_ as black as ebony _. Finally, his face, and a charming face it would have been, a lovable face, if not for the eyes! Oh, you have never seen anything more terrible than those eyes, those eyes_ as red as blood _. They were a demon's eyes, a monster's eyes, holding malice, speaking of death, whispering of chaos._

_He wailed. His audience was struck dumb with shock. The queen sobbed harder._

_Ah, don't be feeling sorry for the queen._

_It's her fault she wasn't careful with what she wished for._

"Oh, dear God in Heaven…I have given birth to the son of the Devil!"

xx

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* * *

_Originally published on fanfiction net._

 


	2. I

**Snow White**

xx

**1**

xx

It was the end.

God did not answer his prayers. The king was not in the castle. There was no falling star to wish upon. The only thing falling from the sky was snow, and he tried to catch the white nothings dancing around him, desperate for one last hope. A flake landed on his palm, indistinguishable from his skin, and it did not melt. He could just make out the perfect six-pointed crystal. It was all he got. His fingers closed on it, his lips moving soundlessly, forming words solely the wind brushing past him could hear.

"Young prince, your tea is ready."

It was not enough.

The child turned from his place on the balcony to face the inevitable. He opened his hand, letting the snowflake blow away to join the rest of its fellows. He had nothing now, nothing. He walked back into the room, his expression placid as he received his sentence.

"Come here, my dear. Have some tea with me," said the Queen.

He simply stared at her, his stepmother. His eyes shifted to the small table in front of her, upon which a teapot and a cup sat innocently.

"There is only one cup," he said.

"An error on my part, do not worry. The maid will bring another," said the Queen, but she did not order anything of the sort to the maid she had spoken of, a tremulous thing who was hovering by the door. "Do come and sit down. It is a special blend of mine. I made it especially for you."

He had been afraid of that. A ghost of a smile graced his lips. "How kind of you, mother."

"Good boy," the Queen cooed with false sweetness. She gestured to the maid. "Pour him a cup."

The maid was quaking madly. The teapot rattled in her grip. The Queen hastily gave the maid an admonitory slap on the arm, and she managed to pour the contents into the cup without slopping it over. He sat down before it. Boiled water and dried plant matter. Seemed like any other cup of tea.

It smelled like death.

"Now, whispered the Queen, "Drink up. Hurry, before it gets cold."

The child fingered the handle of the cup, picked it up. He raised it halfway to his mouth, and then paused. His eyes were very wide and very red. If his stepmother had cared the slightest, she might have noted the sadness and disappointment in them. She did not, of course. The Queen merely flinched when those eyes bore into hers.

"What is it?"

His voice was very quiet. "Why do you do this, mother? What have I done?"

"What are you saying, my boy?"

His crimson orbs wavered in their sockets as though threatening to spill blood.

"Is it my eyes, my hair, my skin? Or is it something else? There must be something I have done wrong, something I have done to make you all wish the worst for me. I can see it. You, father, my deceased mother, the nobles, the servants, the clergy—"  _even God_ "—all of you, when I have been naught but living—tell me, what did I do?"

The Queen let her composure slip. "I—well—that is—" She coughed and regained her doting mother sham. "Whatever are you talking about, my dear? I merely want to serve you tea."

That had been his final act of desperation. The child felt his breath leave him with a shudder. So this was it, then...

_And something else filled his eyes..._

"Now, stop with these odd questions, and enjoy your tea. Drink up. Drink it right now."

They were watching him. Urging, imploring him, to drink the tea.

It was not as if he had any other choice.

He raised the cup to his lips.

And slowly, drank the poison to the last drop.

The cup fell from his numb fingers and shattered on the floor. He doubled up, strangled gasps escaping him as the poison constricted his throat. He choked. His heartbeat slackened as the corrupted blood, burning hellishly, worked its way though his veins and seized his muscles. A series of spasms attacked him, each one more violent than the former, until his whole body stiffened, and he slumped over the table with a thud. He did not move.

There was total silence for several moments.

"Is he dead?" breathed the Queen.

She had to poke the maid to get her going. The terrified maid stumbled toward the prince and felt for his neck. It was cold. There was no pulse. "I t-think he is d-d-dead, Y-Your Highness—"

The Queen jumped up with a triumphant shriek and promptly kicked the body of her stepson from its chair with the sharp toe of her shoe. It landed lifelessly on the floor. "At last!" She dug a foot underneath his body and kicked it again over onto its back, so that he was staring glassy-eyed at the ceiling. "The demon is dead!"

"W-w-what should we d-do with the b-b-body, Your Highness?" the maid stammered.

" _You_  will bury it in the woods before the king returns. But stay here, I will send for a sack and shovel."

"I-I can—"

"Don't be ridiculous," the Queen snapped. "Don't you think people are going to be suspicious when they see you jittering all over the place?"

"B-b-but—"

"What, are you scared of being alone with it? It's the  _dead_  body of a  _child_ , dear. It can't hurt you." She nudged an arm for good measure, chafing it against the broken shards of the cup. It felt little more than a stump. "See? Stay here, lock the door, and do not let anyone in!" The Queen was gone before the maid could say another word.

The air was static.

The maid bolted the door and stayed there, shrinking away from the corpse. She was sure the chills down her spine had less to do with the winter wind passing through the balcony. She glanced at the dead prince. A part of her felt sorry for him. He had been so young, after all. Only seven years old. But it had to be done. The Queen had promised her a handsome sum. If she finished the job properly and held her tongue, she would receive enough money to live peacefully in the countryside for the rest of her days.

Anyway, everyone knew that something had been off with the prince. Rumors were abounding about him. How the former queen had been overcome with grief at having produced such an abomination that she developed a fever, and expired within three days. How the king had resented his son, and had reluctantly named him his heir. How he had had to wait until a cloudy day for the event because the baby kept howling whenever he was let out in the sun. And there were many other inauspicious stories. It was for the good of the kingdom that they got rid of him. There was a reason they called him—

The maid blinked. Had she just seen a hand twitch?

The hairs on the back of her neck stood up. It couldn't be. Surely not.

Surely it had been a trick of the light...

The maid gulped. A dead child, she told herself. He is a dead child. She inched forward. The body lay stiff and cold as it should. She moved closer. It remained unmoving. The maid was reassured by this. It had indeed been a trick of the light. She leaned over the face. Yes, nothing was out of place with the corpse whose skin was as white as snow, hair was as black as ebony, and eyes were as red as blood. He was dead.

Except, dead people's eyes aren't supposed to gleam with hatred, are they?

_There is a reason they call him—_

She barely had time to scream before a broken shard stabbed her throat.

The "corpse" sprang to his feet. The small white hand clutching the shard swiped ruthlessly at the maid's throat with inhuman strength, tearing apart her trachea. Blood gushed out, spilled down her torso and stained her clothes and his hand red. Her shocked eyes eternally reflected the image of her undertaker, who had come for her under the guise of a murdered child, who had a wide grin of maniacal fury splashed across his visage.

— _Dracula._

"The end of you," he rasped.

Her head hanging from her neck like a mangled marionette, the wretched woman sank into the pool of her own blood. She writhed for a moment, then stilled.

The shard had been sharp enough to be lethal. Too bad. A bit duller and he would have relished her prolonged death throes. He let it drop.

He breathed. He flexed his fingers. He shook his head.

He was  _alive._ How was he alive?

The bitter residue of the poison lingered in his mouth. His voice did not come out right and his motor control was unsteady. He ached all over, particularly where his stepmother had kicked him. But he was alive. The Queen had failed.

Madness consumed his features again, yet he forced himself to calm. That foolish,  _foolish_ woman would receive her due tenfold, just not today. He would play with her a while longer. And when Judgment Day came, she would snivel at his feet begging for mercy.

He looked at the dead maid. What a mess. It would take forever to clean up. He contemplated on how he should dispose of her. Maybe he should take a leaf out of his stepmother's book and bury her in the woods. Or...

He kept looking at the dead maid. Or more correctly, the blood around her.

It was...enticing. The vivid color, the pungent smell...he looked at his hand. Soaked red.

He wondered how it would taste.

He lowered his head, tongue sliding out to...taste...the...

The child jerked back in horror. What was he thinking? How could he have thought—how could he have wanted to—to—

The enormity of his situation hit him hard. Here he stood, in this bloody chamber, half-splattered with gore, regarding a ghastly crime scene without one speck of panic. He realized he had just survived a poisoning, killed a person, and had been about to  _drink blood_ , all in quick procession, as if they were most natural things to do, as if he were not a child seven years old.

As if he was a  _monster_.

Quite suddenly, he threw back his head and laughed.

It hurt. His chest hurt so much but he kept laughing and laughing, and it was not pleasant. He laughed until he thought he would collapse again, until he thought he would drop back dead. He was so consumed with mirth that he did not notice the single snowflake that had wafted into the room and rested on his sable locks.

No wonder they hated him. All of them—his stepmother, father, deceased mother, the nobles, the servants, the clergy, even God, even Death—no wonder they were repulsed by him! It was for that reason, wasn't? Because he was a demon, a freak! A monster!

Because he was, as they called him, Dracula. Son of the dragon, son of the Devil.

Ah, he understood now. He understood perfectly. Dracula fell to his knees in laughter and pain. Yes, that was how they had seen him all this time...very well! A monster they wanted, a monster he would be.

And as his laughter continued to ring out, with only the dead to hear, he did not realize that perhaps, just perhaps, it sounded like a child's sob.

xx

xx

_One death in exchange for one life._

_One life in exchange for one death._

_The Devil grants his wishes._

_He is, after all, Dracula. Son of the dragon, son of the Devil._

_Dracula is both child and monster._

_But someday he will cease to be the former._

_And tell me, reader…what do you think will happen then?_

xx

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	3. II

xx

**2**

xx

Years passed. Seasons came and went. The child grew.

He was thirteen years old now. A beautiful boy, but it was a terrible beauty. Like how a sleeping dragon with its glittering scales might be beautiful before it opened its hungry eyes. He had those hungry eyes. They gleamed as if he was a predator cornering his prey, drowning his victims in their sanguine essence. One could not meet them without recoiling. When he smiled, his lips curled as though he was allowing a brief indulgence before smiting whatever was unlucky enough to cross his path.

It was dusk. The moon hung as a perfect white disk against the indigo sky. He gazed at it, entranced. Strange things happened under the full moon, he knew. Tonight would be a fine night for witchery, for madness, for bloodshed.

"A beautiful night," Dracula murmured.

He snipped a rose.

He was tending to his rose garden. It was located in a secluded area behind the castle near the woods, filled with large, luxuriant flowers. Too luxuriant. Almost wanton, with the way those thick, florid petals pursed like a whore's mouth. And none could explain the odd sense of foreboding that came over even as one was lured by their exuberance. Passersby would feel that the great sharp thorns elongated to cling to their sleeves, or that the flowers bore a sinister resemblance to a throbbing organ.

Alluring yet repelling. Rather like him, actually.

Those who deserved to handle these roses were only those who were prepared to comprehend the entirety of their being. Those who would not cringe before their lurid color. Those who could bear their wicked thorns. Those who could stand the ugly truth beneath their soil.

Dracula thought this, because of what he had heard at dinner.

"You will soon be of age," his father had said. "And it will be time for you to take a wife." Then the man had suggested that he start to court some of the noblewomen.

Dracula had barely resisted plunging his fork into the king's winking eye. As if there was anyone among those bimbos that was worthy of his attention, let alone could last ten minutes in his presence.

If he were ever to acknowledge a woman, she would have to be God's masterpiece. Dracula would pluck her out of His hands. She would have to be brave, to stare directly into his eyes. She would have to be unyielding, to endure his bouts of pique. Commanding, to tame the monster within him, and confident, to never waver in her decisions. She would be a proud creature unafraid of the night, who would revel in her viciousness as much as he did his.

He desired someone who could put up with his all, mano a mano. Not in those cowardly ways the Queen stooped to, truly deplorable. Dracula scowled and snipped another rose.

They were beyond salvation. It was a particularly gelid winter this year; the roses would not make it. Already they were sheathed in sheer skins of frost. Within this evening they would turn black and die, better cut them now than let them go limp on their stems. Dracula took the one he had just cut and held it up to the moon. It had a sort of glacial glamour to it. He enjoyed how the ice shimmered in the light.

He imagined presenting this rose to the average female in court.

" _For you, my lady."_

The besotted female would take it with a blush, a giggle or two, maybe bat her eyelashes—to drop it immediately afterwards, perhaps in shock at the icy, blackened edges of the bulbous blossom, its decaying scent.

Ah, but his chosen lady, the woman that fulfilled his requirements, she would not, would she? She would lay it in her hand, unflinching, even as its petals spilled out between her fingers like the sinews of a dead heart or the seeds of a burst pomegranate.

Yet such magnificence—if it existed at all—did not belong beside him. It belonged in dreams, in daylight, in God's realm—places he could not reach—and bitterly Dracula tossed the flower away, knowing that there was no happily ever after for a monster.

He sighed audibly. He must be very bored, for his thoughts to fall to such depths.

It was a beautiful night, and under the witching moon, the prince pruned his roses. He wished something would happen.

He snipped a third rose.

_Third time's the charm._

Something moved at the edge of his peripheral vision. Dracula turned toward the woods, eyes narrowed.

A figure on horseback trotted up the clandestine road through the woods and by his garden. Dracula frowned. The courtiers knew not to intrude on his personal space. They usually stayed away from this direction, unless they were stupid, lost, or suicidal. Friend or foe, this visitor would have to have a good excuse or meet the business end of his shears.

He came out from behind his rosebush, dark hair falling into his eyes and shading their red, for he did prefer the element of surprise. The man on the horse pulled up in front of him.

"Good evening," said the visitor.

Dracula smiled thinly. "Good evening," he said back.

This formality was a precursor to the pause that followed, in which the two assessed each other. Dracula lowered his shears, intrigued. This man seemed a complete outsider. He had on a dusty traveling cloak, the hood shadowing his face, though upon it he wore something that reflected the moonlight—a monocle.

"Can you tell me how to get to the front gate?" said the mysterious visitor. "I'm afraid I'm not familiar with these grounds."

"You must have come from afar," Dracula observed.  _To not recognize who I am._

"Well, I've been traveling for quite some time. It's been long since I've been here."

"Long since?" Dracula repeated curiously.

The man did not elaborate. Instead he appeared to look around his surroundings, which, other than the small rose garden, consisted of only the wild and unkempt shrubberies that typically marked the abandoned recesses of a land. He gestured to the roses. "Bit odd to have a garden here, isn't it? Nice flowers, though. Are you their keeper?"

Dracula raised an eyebrow at the change in subject but said, "Yes."

"Why are you cutting them? Seems a waste."

Sardonically amused that someone had called his roses "nice", Dracula showed the visitor the third one he had cut, twirling it in his fingers and setting sparkles off its frosted leaves. "As you can see, they are soon to die. Why? Do you want them?" He had asked that out of jest, so was rather taken aback when the man nodded in affirmative. Dracula laughed. "You do? Whatever will you do with dying roses?"

"They may be saved, if they're brought in and put in a vase," said the man seriously. "If you don't care, then do you mind if I took them with me?"

He might have forsook them, but still, Dracula did not give out his roses to just  _anybody_. His eyes glowed slightly underneath his fringe. The man's horse pawed at the ground nervously.

"You make strange requests, stranger. Tell me why I should oblige you."

The man chuckled. It occurred to Dracula at that point that this man had the air of, say, an old butler who had dealt with many a cantankerous master.

"The lady I serve—she told me she would like flowers, for her sick father." The man sobered. "Yours are the only ones I have seen on my way. It might cheer her up if I bring them with me, even if they are frozen."

Dracula had to suppress a sneer. It was a ludicrous idea that anyone in their right mind would want his roses beside their sickbed. Tantamount to wishing them death, that was. And he certainly did not fancy them being given to what would most likely be a snooty noble and his prissy daughter.

Although...this man seemed decent enough, genuinely concerned for his masters...they may be more than he gave credit. Besides, what were the chances of meeting a stranger in his garden under the full moon, who happened to ask for roses?

Perhaps he could appease, just this once.

Dracula shrugged. "Alright. Take them."

The man inclined his head; his monocle flashed briefly. "Thank you, young man."

The prince gave him the third rose, and half a dozen more of those he had been planning to clear. Then he told the man how to get to the front gate, go straight and turn left at the walls. The visitor put them in his saddlebag, thanked him again, and went on his way.

He would lose two of the roses by the time he reached the gate.

Three would be lost on his return home.

One would be dropped who knows where.

The last rose remaining would end up in the hands of a girl, who would look at with astonishment the icy, blackened, bulbous, odorous blossom, its petals spilling out between her fingers like the sinews of a dead heart or the seeds of a burst pomegranate.

The butler would apologize. "I should have kept a better eye on them."

And the girl would say, "That's okay, Walter. Where did you find this?"

She did not drop the rose.

Dracula, many miles away in his godforsaken garden, did not know this yet. As soon as the visitor departed, he sheared every one of his roses, every single one, so that the earth was tainted with their shriveling crimson. Their ice crushed under his feet as the bones of the dead would, their petals swept thickly by his feet as a sea of blood would. Underneath this carnage the rotting corpses of people whose breaths he had quenched, suffocated in their resting place of tangled roots.

Clouds hid the moon. Snow started to fall.

He laughed.

It was indeed, a beautiful night.

xx

xx

Around the time the prince was having his conversation with the visitor, the Queen was pacing in her chamber.

It had been six years since her thwarted attempt to murder the prince. During those years she had dared not lay a hand on him except in the most indirect of manners. She still shuddered to remember that fateful day, when she had walked into the room and found not a dead boy but a dead maid and he looming over the body with an insane grin on his face.

She had been too shocked to scream. The child had cast his diabolical eyes on her, and said only one thing.

"She has committed suicide."

There an unspoken pact had been made. The Queen had come to her senses then—she had fled, chucking the sack and shovel at him.

The next day, the prince had started a rose garden.

She had a good idea what transpired in that garden, a very good idea indeed. What else could explain where her men disappeared to? The spies she had sent, gone. The assassins she had dispatched, gone. She had even commissioned priests—gone as well. And all the while they went missing, those hideous flowers in the prince's garden prospered.

The Queen bit her nails. Ooh, how she longed to get rid of that brat!

She had despised him from the moment she saw him. She had come to court and married the king when the boy was five years old, and even then he had been a creepy little thing. Far too quick and clever for his age, he fixed his gaze as if he could see through her mind. Add on his unholy appearance, odd habits, and rumors, and she could not picture living a peaceful life with him around.

She had consulted her enchanted mirror. "Mirror, mirror, on the wall, what does the future with the young prince hold for me?"

The mirror was a short, squat thing, set in an ivory frame studded with topaz. It spoke in a German accent.

"Meine Königin, he will be the death of you."

So she had decided to kill him.

And she had failed. Spectacularly. How was she supposed to know he would be so  _indestructible_?

The Queen secretly practiced witchery, and she was well-versed in poisons. The recipe she had prepared for the prince had been foolproof. A spoon of hemlock, a pinch of belladonna...she had been sure it would work...and it  _had_ worked, to a point, had it not? Nobody could fake death like  _that._

"So how is he alive?" the Queen had asked her mirror hysterically.

"He will not be killed so easily, meine Königin," the mirror had said. "They call him Dracula for a reason. He is nearly the Devil incarnate."

" _Nearly_?"

"Not completely," the mirror had defined unhelpfully.

Now, as if having to deal with an undying demon for a stepson and the heir to the throne had not been distressing enough, today at dinner the king had mentioned about the boy's matrimonial matters. She had nearly choked on her asparagus. What, and ensure a generation of red-eyed damnations? Was the king senile?

"It is useless to depend on the king. He is weak and lily-livered. You must make your own plans," the mirror advised.

The Queen moaned. "What should I do? The kingdom is doomed."

"You are overreacting. The prince is yet thirteen. There is time."

"But how will I eliminate him, once and for all?" She continued to pace to and fro, struggling for a solution. The mirror kept silent.

Suddenly it said, "You will need to hire a professional."

The Queen snorted. "A professional? We have had plenty of those already."

"Go to the king. He has a visitor with him."

"A visitor?"

"He may have the answers you seek," said the mirror cryptically, and nothing more.

The Queen left her chamber and hurried toward the royal reception room. She had turned the corner, when she saw a man exiting the room. He carried a dusty traveling cloak. He looked to be in his mid-sixties, but despite his apparent age, he had a lithe figure and a full head of dark hair, tied back. He wore a monocle over his left eye. The man caught her watching, bowed, and set off.

The Queen strode over to her husband. "Who was that, Your Majesty?"

"Why, that was the Hellsing family's butler. He has brought wonderful news. The Hellsings have returned to this land at last!"

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	4. III

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**3**

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The coach clattered to a halt at the front gate. The driver jumped down and opened its door, and a middle-aged man came out, followed by a young girl. The man did not bother to wait for the girl and went ahead without a glance. The girl trailed behind him, stumbling a bit in the snow, pulling her cloak close to her small frame and shooting the man mutinous glares.

"Hurry up, Integra."

She sighed, "Yes, uncle."

She looked up as she walked. The castle was a grand structure, yet somehow had a forbidden, desolate atmosphere about it, even in the bright sunshine. She could very well imagine it to be a castle a dragon kept to lock its maiden away.

Integra had not wanted to come here. She would much rather have stayed at home and read books aloud to her sick father. The message from the Queen inviting Sir Arthur Hellsing to afternoon tea, however, could not be ignored. He could not go, of course, and her uncle had volunteered to attend in his stead. Integra had seen the look on her uncle's face—of poorly concealed intrigue—and had decided, for the good of the Hellsing name, she should accompany him.

" _You_? What business do  _you_  have in the castle?" Uncle Richard had demanded spitefully.

"Oh, let her go with you, Richard," her father had wheezed. "It'll do her good to get some fresh air and have a look around the place."

Her uncle had grumbled about her being a meddlesome girl who would only encumber him. He had consented in the end, through her father's insistence—though she suspected it had just as much as to do with the way Walter had been meaningfully flexing his wrists.

"A wise decision you have made, my lady," the butler had commended as she prepared for the outing.

"I don't trust Uncle Richard," said Integra plainly. She squinted at her glasses, blew on them, and cleaned them with a handkerchief. "I want to keep watch on him and make sure he doesn't try anything." She put them on. Her blue eyes regarded her caretaker seriously through the lenses. "Take care of father for me while I'm gone, Walter."

"But of course," Walter pledged. Then he saw a pouch on her dressing table. "What's that, Integra?"

"This?" She loosened the drawstring, and abruptly the smell of a withered rose pervaded the air. The pouch was filled with black petals. "The rose you gave me yesterday. It seemed a shame to throw it away, when you so kindly brought it back for me."

She closed the pouch and pocketed it. Walter's smile had become fixed. "Oh. Are you, er, planning to do something with it?"

Integra polished her silver cross and fastened it onto her cravat. "Not really. Though I was thinking of visiting the garden you told me about—"

"Don't go there," Walter said sharply.

Surprised at his tone, Integra swiveled around in her seat away from the mirror to stare at him. "Why? Walter, what's wrong?"

His expression had been frightfully grim. "Forgive me, my lady. This may be my misjudgment, but I have a bad feeling about that place. Last night when I was there—call it an old man's intuition—I could tell that, whoever—or whatever—it was that I met, it did not bode well."

"What are you saying?" Integra breathed. "Are you saying that—that there was something  _evil_  in that garden?"

"Whatever it was," Walter held her eyes firmly, "I advise you not to venture into that garden, Integra. There are things happening in those grounds that may be beyond your capacity. Look after yourself, and stay safe. Do you promise?"

"Yes, Walter," she had reassured. "I promise. Don't worry."

Thus it was with vigilance that Integra entered the threshold of the castle. In retrospect, it had been the sheer gravity in Walter's attitude that had unsettled her the most. Integra had known the butler since forever, and she had never seen him that anxious for her before. He knew better than anyone that she could handle mostly anything, so for him to act as such was a rather foreboding sign.

"Hurry  _up_ , Integra," Richard snapped, jolting her out of her musings. "Do not dawdle. Why I must be stuck with a troublesome wench like you—"

"Language, Uncle Richard. You don't want your reputation to be tarnished by your uncouth mouth barely three days after our return, do you?" Integra said lightly.

Richard appeared as if he would slap her. He could, if he wanted to, since neither her father nor Walter were present. However, because quite a lot of people were bustling about, and because servitors were coming to escort them, he settled with simply casting malevolent looks at her. Integra pointedly took no notice of this.

Subconsciously she felt for the pouch of petals inside her cloak. Even with what Walter had said, the rose gave her an odd sense of security.

"No, thank you," she said to the servant who had come to take her cloak. It was drafty in the castle. She and her uncle were led up a flight of stairs and through several corridors. Everywhere she could see was furnished with intricately carved furniture, embroidered upholstery, and gilded ornaments. This grandeur, to Integra, was for naught. There was heaviness to her surroundings that weighed down on her, as though she would have to peel off the exterior and expose the ruse underneath. Nothing in this castle seemed true. She wondered if it had ever been truly lived in.

At last they arrived in the Queen's apartments, which were also extravagantly decorated, with sunlight streaming inside. In the salon, ladies and gentlemen of the court were already lounging. Their entrance garnered considerable buzz, the courtiers leaning forth and toward one another to whisper about the newcomers. Here were the elusive Hellsings, back in the country after more than ten years abroad.  _"Is that Sir Hellsing?" "Who is that girl, his daughter? Why is her skin so dark?"_

 _Oh God._ Integra stifled a long-suffering sigh.

"Ah, Sir Hellsing, I presume?" A woman waltzed up to them, bedecked in an excess of lace and powder and bijouterie that Integra had a hard time figuring out how she could move at all. "It is a pleasure to meet you. Welcome, welcome!"

Uncle Richard bowed. So this must be the Queen, then. Integra was unimpressed. The woman was beautiful, she supposed, but had the same sort of superficiality that she had perceived from the castle. The Queen reminded her of her uncle, somewhat, in how they held a carefully lacquered persona of morality. "He is not  _Sir_  Hellsing," Integra spoke up. "The one who carries that title is my father, Sir Arthur Hellsing. This is his brother, Richard Hellsing."

Richard might as well have swallowed a lemon. Integra shot him a glare.  _Was this what you were seeking, uncle? A few minutes of fame, taking advantage of my father's position? How petty of you._

"My, who is this darling thing?" The Queen said with strained gaiety, reaching out to touch her hair. Integra stepped out of the way and then, so as not to seem rude, curtsied.

"Integral Fairbrook Wingates Hellsing, Sir Arthur Hellsing's daughter, Your Highness."

"My niece, Your Highness," Richard put in quickly. "Precisely what I was going to tell her, Integra. Now," he said through gritted teeth, "why don't you run along to your peers and introduce yourself to them, hmm?" He pushed her. Integra unwillingly complied, knowing it would be unwise and useless to aggravate him further in this lot. She kept an eye on him, though.

Talk broke out as people surrounded her uncle for a recount of their travels. Integra walked over to the table where children her age sat. They looked curiously at her.

Integra was eleven years old, but the way she held herself—like she had a wall of iron around her—made the average person think twice before speaking to her. This seemed to be the matter with her table, as nobody was attempting to strike up a conversation with her.

"You are a Hellsing, then?" A girl finally asked Integra. "Where have your family been all these years?"

"Abroad," Integra said simply, preoccupied with her lookout.

"What exactly is it that the Hellsings do, anyway?" a boy asked.

The Queen was conversing animatedly with Uncle Richard. Integra shifted to the speaker. "We're knights."

"Knights!" another girl snorted. "That's not very high up."

Integra was about to retort, when she heard the Queen say, "If I may have a word with you in private, Richard?"

There it was—a conspiratorial spark in her uncle's eyes, and in the Queen's as well. Integra frowned. Something was definitely up.

They were leaving the salon. Integra stood up. "Excuse me," she muttered, before rushing out after her uncle and the Queen.

They were too fast for Integra, who was trying to muffle her footsteps and stay inconspicuous at the same time. She saw them rounding a corner. Yet when she followed them, the hallway was empty. She lurched back in bewilderment.

Gone! But where to? Integra did not see any other passages or doors. It was as if they had...vanished into thin air.

_There are things happening in those grounds that may be beyond your capacity._

She bit her lip. They surely must have gone  _somewhere_...

Fifteen minutes later, however, Integra was forced to acknowledge that she had lost them. Worse, she herself was lost, and wherever she was, it was completely different from the rest of the castle. It was mystifying. Bare grey walls and dust, not a stitch of the usual pomp, everything was stark here. The hallways were deserted. She was its sole occupant.

The air was dead and cold. Integra clutched at her cloak as she wandered down a corridor. She thought that if she was not going to find her uncle and the Queen, she would at least very much like to find somewhere she could stay warm and rest her tired feet.

That was when she saw a door.

There was a mahogany door, at the end of the corridor. In the middle of nowhere. Integra blinked at it.

Was it just her, or had her cross become heavier?

_Should I or should I not go in?_

_(And in another story, Schneewittchen asked, should I or should I not eat this apple?)_

The door was open slightly. She peered in.

It was a large room. A library, judging by the presence of books and comfy armchairs, yet despite its size and function it was very dark. The only source of light was a single candle whose flame was flickering faintly. There were windows, but all were shrouded in thick velvet. Unable to understand this odd choice of interior, Integra crossed over to the nearest window and flung open the curtains.

The winter air and the white snow have a way of intensifying the brightness of light.

The sudden blast of sunshine was such that it nearly blinded her. She yelped and leapt back. A second later, there was a terrible scream.

Integra whipped around to see a black-haired boy on the floor, writhing in pain while clutching his eyes.

"The curtains!" he screamed. "Close the curtains!"

She did so immediately, and the room was enveloped in darkness once more. It did not seem to help the boy as quickly; he had stopped screaming but was still shielding his eyes and convulsing. Integra wasn't feeling much better either. God, what had just happened? Whoever heard of anyone reacting to sunlight like that? Her heart was pounding in her ears. After taking a few deep breaths, she gathered up her nerves and approached the boy.

She was almost afraid to touch him, because he looked so fragile. What little flesh she could see in the candlelight of his hands and neck told her he was far too thin to be healthy. Not to mention his skin was the palest white, a trait no doubt linked to his aversion to the sun. She was afraid that if she touched him he would collapse into dust.

Integra shook her head at the immature thought. People did not collapse into dust.

 _Anyway, this situation is entirely my own bloody fault,_ she thought.  _I must do something._ She discarded the idea of running for help, knowing there was no one in the vicinity. What could she do, then, to make him comfortable?

Integra recalled how her father or Walter would pat her shoulder and whisper soothing words when she was hurt or ill, and decided to do the same to this strange, porcelain-like boy who was curled up in a ball and shaking so hard it was a miracle he had not fainted. She laid a tentative hand on him but nearly drew it back at once, startled. He was so cold.

_He must be really ill._

Her hand stayed put.

"Shh," she whispered, patting his shoulder. "It's alright. You'll be okay."

Under the steady beat of her hand and the softness of her voice she felt his shudders gradually lessen until he stilled. However, along with his calmness came a bit of tension, and Integra felt him stiffen at her prolonged touch. She could not blame him. She was, after all, a complete stranger.

"Are you feeling better now?"

There was no answer.

Since he was uneasy with her hand, Integra thought it would be wise to replace it with her cloak. Walter had always told her to stay warm when she was sick. She undid the fastenings and put it carefully around his shoulders. At first the boy hesitated, then pulled the cloth tighter around his self, burying his face in it. She smiled.

What next? She couldn't leave him on the floor, for sure.

"Do you think you can move?"

He remained silent. She sighed and bent down and gripped his arms. He flinched, but allowed himself to be slowly helped to his feet. Again she was afraid for him. His cold body gave her the chills, and she was glad to have given him her cloak, for it was obvious that he needed it much more than she did. She led him gently to one of the armchairs. "Sit here."

He did. Satisfied that he was settled, Integra took the chair opposite him and waited patiently until he was willing to talk.

xx

xx

Dracula was in shock.

He had retreated into his library to avoid the dratted sun, reaching for a book when he sensed someone in the room. He had turned, and had barely the chance to glimpse a small figure by a window when the curtains had opened and he was met with the full force of the afternoon sun.

Although he loathed it, sunlight was not fatal to him and for the most part he could bear it. Yet this time it had caught him unawares, and it had been excruciating. He had felt as if his eyes were burning in their sockets and his face was melting off.

He had thought it was his dear stepmother's doing. Perhaps she had ordered a child servant to sneak in and pull the prank. Very in character of her, to exploit weaklings to do her bidding, and of course she knew about his weakness. Heavens knows how many times she had abused it. And it had become hurriedly dark again, so he assumed that the servant must have dropped the curtains and ran away at his yells. Unfortunately, Dracula was in no mood for forgiveness. He was furious that he had been caught like this...well then. Fair was fair. If his stepmother was going to play in such a petty way then he was going to step up his game as well. Too bad for the young servant, it was his fault that he was stupid enough to follow orders from that miserable excuse of a witch. Dracula would hunt down the kid, kill him, and throw the carcass at the Queen's feet.

There was a rustle of movement, though, indicating he was not alone. Oh, had the servant not fled? Probably frozen in terror at realizing who he was, how pathetic. The prince smiled amidst his suffering. That made things much easier. He would just kill him then and there.

He prepared to spring, but his eyes failed him. His senses were numb. This would not do; he needed his wits about him if he wanted to do a proper disembowelment without staining the carpet. He tried to get a grip on himself but the shaking did not stop, and he had no idea when his eyesight would recover. So Dracula stayed on the floor, frustrated and murderous, when something happened that had utterly disarmed him.

A hand covered his right shoulder. A warm, soft hand...and did not let go.

"You'll be okay," a female voice murmured.

He certainly had not expected his assaulter to touch him. Or to be a girl.

Her hot breath washed over him pleasantly. She was patting his shoulder; the gesture was foreign to him and he could not discern its meaning. In spite of that he felt his body relax to the rhythm, calming him until the effects of his photosensitivity ebbed away. Unconsciously he leaned into her warmth.

He caught himself and stiffened. What did he think he was doing? What did  _she_ think she was doing?

So it was a girl. No matter. He would still kill her. Cut her down, starting with her hand that dare touch him with such familiarity—

That murder intent flew out of his mind at what the girl did next.

The hand left him— _Naturally_ , Dracula sneered inwardly, unable to explain the pang in his heart—only to be replaced by a cloak which the girl gingerly placed on him. He allowed himself to be shocked as the cloth, heated to her body temperature and wonderfully,  _gloriously_  warm, caressed his snowy skin as if it would melt it.

Maybe this was what a hug felt like. He wouldn't know. He had never been hugged before.

For the first time Dracula wondered who this girl was and why she was here. He rubbed the fabric between his fingers. It was made of fine cashmere, fit for a noble. But he had never seen her at social gatherings. If he had, he would have remembered her. She had a distinct scent that smelled like...he brought the garment to his nose and inhaled deeply. The redolence of rich tea, heavily drawn, with a feminine base, pervaded his senses. It was addictive. He was so enamored with it that he was barely aware that she had asked him a question, or that his legs were moving.

When he snapped back into the present he found himself in an armchair.

The room was silent save for the susurrus of the winter wind. He could feel her staring intently at him. He wished he could stare back, but he didn't want to give out his red eyes.

After a while he heard her mutter, "Doesn't this room have a fireplace?"

She must be cold. Of course she was cold. She had given him her cloak.

"Look behind you," he said.

"So you can speak!" she exclaimed, pleased. "How do you feel? No, wait, let me light the fire first, then we can talk."

He heard her slide off the cushion, take the candle and hurry over to the fireplace. While she busied herself with the logs, Dracula took his chance to peek through the flaps to study the girl.

She appeared a year or two younger than him with her small stature. With her back toward him, all he could see was her long, mellow blonde hair.

There was the crackle of fire devouring wood and her gratified huff, and firelight illuminated the place. It was when she had turned around to come back to him, that he saw her face. She had unconventionally dark skin and a sharp nose, perched upon which were round spectacles. Behind them were bright blue eyes. They were unwavering and pure as they gazed at him, as no others had ever been.

An unidentifiable fear seized him. He didn't think he could stand it if those eyes looked at him with repulsion like everybody else.

He pressed deeper into the clothing, so that she would never see his eyes, never see his face, and he wished it could remain that way forever, so her eyes would never be tainted.

From the fireplace, Integra watched the boy curl up in a fetal position. Before that she could have sworn she had seen a glint of red from under the cloak. Her brows furrowed.

She bypassed her seat and came to a halt before the boy. All that was visible was a mess of raven locks. She wanted to see what he looked like, but her cloak was fully drawn over him. Come to think of it, all along he had been almost desperately hiding his face, which initially she had attributed to his affliction but now suspected another reason. As though something was on it that he did not want to show. This only intensified Integra's curiosity and worry and she stooped down, confronting him.

"What's wrong?"

He twitched. "Nothing is wrong," replied the boy quickly, his voice muffled. "Please go away."

Integra was a bit hurt and irked that he was dismissing her so easily like this. She could understand that he was aloof with her since she was the cause of the problem, but honestly, she had not done it on purpose!

She let out a deep sigh. "I owe you an apology. I didn't know you were here. I should have checked to see if anyone was in the room before I did anything. I'm sorry."

If anything, her apology only seemed to upset him more. His voice was shaky when he answered, "That's fine, now go."

In another circumstance, Integra would have left. There was no use badgering someone who obviously did not want her company. But now she felt no desire to leave, she was more determined than ever to solve this mystery of the boy who had been in an abandoned wing of the castle, cold and alone.

"Excuse me, you have my cloak?" she pointed out dryly.

He didn't have an answer to that.

"Why won't you show me your face?"

He didn't have an answer to that, either.

"I'm not leaving until you tell me what is wrong."

"Why are you doing this?" the boy asked miserably. "Is it pity? If it is, I don't need it!" His tone turned venomous. "Leave!"

Integra bristled. "What on earth are you talking about? I'm only worried about you!"

He froze, as if what she had said had been beyond his wildest imaginings.

"Besides, you were hurt by my doing, and it is my responsibility to deal with the consequences of my actions," Integra continued coldly. "I'm just trying to help you, or are you going to say you don't need my help?"

The boy replied, very quietly, "Don't you know who I am?"

"No. And I want to know."

There was a long, dangerous silence.

"Is that what you want?"

She held her ground. "It is."

"Alright. Let's see how you react to this," he said.

And his face lunged out at her like a jack-in-the-box.

xx

xx

xx

xx


	5. IV

xx

**4**

xx

Beware those places even monsters avoid.

The king of monsters lives there.

xx

xx

The first time she saw the  _other_  she was but five years old, and it was completely by accident.

They had been readying to go abroad by then. A fulfillment of a last wish of sorts for Sir Arthur Hellsing; he wanted to see the world before the cancer took him, not stuck in a bloody bed. Their household had then been blissfully sans Richard, who had only tagged along on their trip in its latter half to get into his brother's good graces.

Hellsing had not had any reason to serve its purpose for years. Approximately seven winters ago, there had been an inexplicable purge of the creatures of night. Arthur had never sought to question the mysteriously brought peace. His smoking habits had caught up to him at last, and frankly, all he wanted to do was spend his limited time with his daughter.

That evening, she had wandered too close to the forest at the edge of their land in the brief seconds it took for Walter to pour tea in her father's cup. When he called out for her, her curious eyes had been staring into the darkness beyond the trees.

It took a moment for her young eyes to understand that there was something lurking in the darkness, and this time, she could not make it go away by turning on a lamp. She felt it come closer and closer, the shadowy thing, and she had been transfixed—because she had never seen anything so empty, so desolate before. Her vivid mind had always given life to something, even dead leaves, but this was beyond reach.

Another brief seconds later, Walter had unleashed his wires and her father had pulled her away. The wires cut branches and whole trunks, but they passed through the shadow, and a moment later it disappeared.

"Well, this certainly affects our plans," Arthur had said, breaking the awful silence. "What on bloody earth do you think was that, Walter? I've never seen the likes of it before."

"I cannot say for sure. It was also unlike anything I have dealt with. However, it seems to be—"

"Gone," said Integra, who until then had not uttered a single peep. "To wherever it came from."

The two adults stared at the little girl who had always been too perceptive. Walter knelt before Integra. "What do you mean, my lady?"

"It gave up. But I think that at the end it was just sad. Didn't you feel it?"

Walter and her father exchanged glances. "We're leaving next morning," Arthur said flatly.

_And so the little girl was taken far away from her land and from the boy who had faced death in a teacup on that very evening...the two men would be baffled as their journey went on that there were more monsters outside the land they had sworn to protect than there were inside it...they took care to shield their young miss from them even as they fitted her step by step with swords and pistols..._

_When they came back, it was without the knowledge that they were in audience of the king of monsters._

xx

xx

When the boy jumped at her, there had been only one thing going on inside her head, really. It was from a conversation that she and Walter had had some time ago. "There will be times when I will not be available at your side, my lady Integra. When that happens, I want you to fight back, with everything you've got."

"But what if I am without even my sword? What then?"

"Well then," Walter had said, gravely but with a twinkle in his eye, "you start by hitting them in the face."

"In the face."

"Yes. Remember my lady, when in doubt, just punch it in the face!"

And with a swerve that would have made her butler proud, Integra smashed her fist into the boy's nose.

There was a  _crack_  and the boy was clutching at his face  _again_  as she fell on her bum at the aftershock. Her glasses askew, she quickly pushed them back and scrambled to her feet as the mess of unruly black hair slumped in agony in front of her started to shake uncontrollably.

"You...dared...to hit me...!"

"YOU jumped me! And after I was trying to help you!"

"You asked for it! And I wouldn't have needed your help  _in the first place_ if it wasn't for you, you ridiculous bint!" he snarled, pressing his palm into his nosebleed and getting up. He was going to absolutely murder this girl! No one had managed to lay a hand on him for years—no one had dared—and—and—

_He was not impressed, damn it!_

"You're going to die," he spat.

The effect was ruined by the slight slurring of his words and the girl just watched him warily. "Don't make me punch you again."

She was not going to say sorry for hitting him, but the sight of the nosebleed and the way he hunched as he stood made it difficult for her to stay vindicated. Integra resisted the urge to throw her hands up in the air. What was it with this boy and his disconcerting ability to make her feel angry and concerned at the same time?

Integra hesitated, then untied her cravat from around her neck. After this she was never going to wander into a library ever again. She thrust it at him. "Here. Stanch that bleed with this."

The red eyes—which she had  _definitely_  noticed but would have to take a backseat for now, for the situation was crazy enough already—shifted underneath his fringe and the boy snarled, "Another trap?"

He was fixated on not the cravat itself but the silver cross that was stilled pinned to it, which almost rekindled his earlier suspicions that she was sent to get rid of him. Yet she merely sighed and unpinned it from the cloth. Silver in one hand and scrap of red cloth in the other, she held the latter to him.

"Take it," she ordered. "You're going to get blood all over my cloak."

"I'll tear your cloak into bloody pieces if that is what will bother you."

"You will do no such thing," Integra snapped. The red underneath the black intensified. They felt like flames trying to burn her eyes, but she held her ground.

Finally, with a soft, unintended laugh, he took the cloth with his unbloodied hand, and bonelessly he slumped into his chair once more. When he pressed it to his nose Integra noted sharply that the bleeding seemed to have slowed.

_Already?_

_What are you?_  She wanted to ask. Yet that would be the wrong question, would it not? But the proper interrogative pronoun for her acquaintance refused to settle upon her tongue. She held it thus, mindful of the sudden quiet that came over him.

She needed to leave. She was tangled up in the mystery of this boy and desperately needed to clear her head before venturing further and, quite possibly, making another mistake. Integra regarded him, this belligerent sum of snow white, blood red and ebony black, and saw the slightest trembling of his shoulders.

"This has been a mess," she said, "and the only way to make a mess better is, as my father is fond to say, a good cup of tea. So I am going to get a cup of tea." Two cups, actually. And a doctor, Integra thought. "You had better be here when I come back or I'll shove this cross up your nose."

"You are in no position to threaten me," he hissed.

"And you are?"

There was a distinct air of petulance as the boy gritted his teeth.

Integra stood watching him a little while longer, debated on yanking her cloak back from him but decided against it. She was going to need a long,  _long_  drag of cold air to clear up her head. "I'm going."

When she moved to the godforsaken door that had led her to this, she felt his eyes follow her. And while he did not make a noise, she sensed the atmosphere grow heavy with bitter melancholia, and found herself unsurprised when he spoke, with a clearer voice, when she reached the doorknob.

"You're running away."

Integra turned, hand on the knob. "I am not running away. I do not run away, period."

"They always do."

The statement dropped from his lips abruptly as if he had not had any intention of letting it do so. The red eyes hastily retreated into its curtain of black hair. Strangely, she felt the need to assure him.

"Well,  _I_  won't. As I said, you have my cloak. That was a birthday present and I'm not letting you hold it hostage. I  _will_  get it back from you...whoever you are." Integra sighed. "You still haven't told me your name."

She waited, not really expecting a reply, and there were none. Strengthening her resolve, she pushed the door open and stepped outside. But then she heard him whisper.

"I'll tell you, when you get back."

xx

xx

When she had taken twenty steps from the door, her mind caught up to her.

Red.  _Redredredredredredbloodred._

He had red eyes.  _He had red eyes._

Immediately her precocious mind rifted through all that her father and Walter had ever told her about the creatures who lived beyond the scope of humanity. Many of those that were described to have crimson eyes crossed her thoughts. Yet the more she thought about them the more she felt out of balance. Monsters, she had been told, were merciless. They did not wait, they did not negotiate, they did not ask. They felt nothing other than the urge to destroy.

_If he were truly a monster, he would not have waited. He would have attacked the moment he had a chance. And there were a lot of chances, even if I kind of incapacitated him half the time._

_Is he a monster? If not...then what?_

The cold seeped through her blouse and Integra hugged herself as she walked slowly away from the library with the mahogany door.

The truth was that Integra did not feel comfortable in thinking about her nameless acquaintance as a monster because she remembered the thinness of his shoulders as she comforted him and her young righteous mind knew that no one, not even a supposed monster, should ever, ever feel so fragile, so vulnerable like that, and it had made her  _angry_  that there had been someone roughly her age stuck in that cold, dark library at the end of a deserted corridor.

She wandered through the hallways in a haze of thoughts, stopping only to firmly assess her surroundings so she would not get lost on her way back. When she entered a third new corridor without meeting anyone she was getting resigned to the probability that she would have to find the kitchens herself—not that she knew where they were either—when an unremarkable man appeared around the corner just then, holding a duster in one hand. Integra let out a relieved breath and hurried toward him.

"Excuse me! You there! I'm in need of your service."

The servant looked down in confusion at the little girl until he realized where they were standing. He blanched in an instant. "Wh-what are you doing here?"

Impatiently, Integra said, "That doesn't matter right now. I need you to bring a tea tray with two cups and anything edible right away. It's urgent. I also need a doctor. I think I broke someone's nose."

When the servant did not answer Integra began to seriously question the state of the kingdom if all its retainers were of this calibre, but was startled to see the petrified expression on the man's face.

"You don't understand, miss! This wing here, it belongs to the prince! How on earth did you get here?"

_The prince?_

"The prince? Is that by chance a boy about my age, with pale skin and black hair and," Integra swallowed, "red eyes?"

The servant looked like he was about to have an aneurysm. "You've already met him. God help me. Young miss, I don't know who you are, but you need to leave at once! He's not normal!"

How unlikely it was that the servant's panicked warnings did not strike fear into Integra at all. Instead it rekindled her ire.

"I am Integral Fairbrook Wingates Hellsing, and if you have ever heard any rumors of my family, you will understand what I am trying to say to you." Integra held the servant's terrified gaze. "Bring me a tea tray with two cups and snacks, and contact the court physician. If you're too much of a coward to bring it to the library I'll be waiting here to take it myself."

xx

xx

In what was the most humiliating day of Dracula's life, he had been taken by surprise, blinded, punched, and threatened. A little slip of a girl had done more to him in less than an hour than most hired assassins could do in a whole night.

It was the most fascinating day he had ever had.

Sniffing the blood back, he chose not to remove the cravat from his face, content to let the novel scent of the girl to fill his nose as it righted itself. Having been around her neck, its scent was more potent than the cloak's had been, and he felt his eyelids grow heavy.

He laughed again. He had not meant to in her presence earlier, but it had not been something he could help. That resilience, that fire, how magnificent it had been! The way those lovely blue eyes had met his at every word! Never had someone gazed directly into his eyes before and not withered. She had been made of ice—no, she had been made of  _iron_ —the finest of, an incorruptible beauty.

_But if she doesn't come back..._

His mirth vanished as quickly as it had come.

Shadows that had writhed in merriment around him died down into depressing flatness as he considered the ugly possibility that the girl had lied and was not returning after all. That would be more than a disappointment. That would be a crime...a crime he would seek recompense...

When he imagined her eyes dulled in death, however, his dimmed as well.

He wiped his face clean of blood diligently, then twisted the thin cotton-backed fabric around his left knuckles until the bones were on the verge of popping out of the skin. He glared at the door. When would she arrive? Next minute? Next hour? Next decade? Next century—

_Footsteps._

The girl entered his lair carefully this time balancing a tray with a steaming pot of tea, two cups and a plate of scones. Dracula's lips twisted in bitter amusement at the memories the china conjured. He forced himself to focus on  _her_  as she passed by his chair with a look of great concentration on her face and set the tray down on a side table.

Methodically she poured the contents of the pot into the cups, diffusing the smell of Darjeeling into the air. She gave him a saucer and he took it with a small, quizzical smile, which she ignored, and she took her own and settled upon the seat which was becoming quite familiar to her. Dracula humored her silence. He fingered the cup as he had had in a reminiscent yet vastly different stage six years ago and was entranced by how soft and thoughtful her face looked behind the rising steam.

She took a sip, and said, "So, you're the prince."

His fingers convulsed around the handle of the cup. "Found out, have you?"

"A servant told me," she shrugged. "Why didn't you tell me...Your Highness?" she said stiffly.

"None of that. I think we deserve a little less formality after you've maimed me." Suppressing a laugh at her indignant look he added, "It wouldn't have made a difference, would it?" He hoped it did not; it would be tragic if she were one of those sycophants that groveled before ranks and titles.

"No. You deserved that punch."

"I suppose I did." She looked surprised at his admission. He went on, "But still, can you blame me? You were so very insistent." At that Dracula leaned forward, and put the full force of his blood red eyes onto her.

The delight he felt when she refused to look away nearly suffocated him. She had the most adorable crinkle on her forehead when she said, "I may be young, but I'm no fool. You may have  _very_ peculiar eyes but I know well to judge someone by their character than their appearance."

"Just the eyes?" He leaned as close as his chair would allow.

"I'd say everything about you is peculiar," she muttered. "Enough of that now." She waved him away. He did not know whether to be insulted that she would dismiss him so easily. "Our introductions are long overdue. Shall we? You did promise."

She had heard him, then. So he had. And so had she. She had come back for him and he would honor her forever.

"I'd thought knowing that I'm a prince would be enough. I'm quite infamous, you know."

"I'm sure you are," she said dryly and he had to suppress another laugh. "Though I wouldn't know. It's been long since I've been here."

There was something familiar about that statement.

She stood and held out a hand. "Integral Fairbrook Wingates Hellsing."

Very familiar.

"But you may call me Integra."

_Integra..._

_Integra...Hellsing!_

His day had become infinitely and exponentially better.

xx

xx

Father Anderson loved the children of his orphanage with all his heart, and the sound of their voices would always be the thread he followed back from after his killing spree. Right now, little Rosalind was clinging to his trousers begging him to find a four-leaf clover together and Alfred was trailing behind him trying to whistle a tune with abysmal results. All around him their laughter was, soothing his gnarled soul.

Children would always be granted entry to heaven. The faults of children would always be given a chance. That was what Anderson believed. Even Maxwell, who was flicking pebbles at Yumie, whose fingers were inching toward her toy knife. "Maxwell! What'd I say?"

The child hurriedly hid his hands behind his back. "Yes, Father."

"Maxwell you shit! I told you not to bother Yumie!"

"Why don't you do something about it, Heinkel?"

"Someone is going to get stabbed by my knife if you all don't shut up.  _And it won't be me_."

"Children!" Anderson barked. "It's time to get ready for dinner now. Go wash your hands and feet and say your prayers."

As the trio obeyed, squabbling all the while, another priest approached him.

"Father Anderson. A word."

"What?" He asked gruffly. He told Alfred that he would improve on his whistling and to Rosie he gently chided that the day was getting dark and there would be more time to tomorrow. He herded the children back into the orphanage. "Remember to give thanks to the Lord our Father for His blessings and His gifts which we receive from His bounty, for all His benefits, He who livest and reignest world without end. May the souls of the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace.  _Amen!"_

"Father," the other priest persisted, "there is a rumor, Father, that in the kingdom beyond the channel there is a rather, ah,  _peculiar_  prince. Some of our own men have crossed the channel to confirm the rumors, Father Anderson. And none of them returned. Not one."

" _Draco Dormiens Nunquam Titillandus,"_ Anderson boomed. "Never tickle a sleeping dragon. Don't come to me yapping about what those fools did in foreign territory. They tickle the dragon. They get eaten by the dragon. Like so many do."

"But Father Anderson! You must sense that something sinister is at work! If we could get rid of the source while it is still young, we could—"

"Children," Anderson cut off, "must be given a chance. Always. Whether they be angelic. Whether they be demonic. They'll always be given a chance before Him."

"But if the rumors grow, Father? And the monster grows with them?"

"Then," the Judas Priest said, trudging back to the children, "I have a bayonet with his name written on it."

xx

xx

"Dracula."

Integra's eyebrows shot up.

"Dracula. That is what they call me." He kissed the hand she had given him. "Pleasure to meet you, Integra."

That his nose appeared to be completely healed by the time she returned should have unnerved her. She had asked for a doctor for nothing. But she took it in stride for now. The sun was setting; a sliver of scarlet light slid into the room between the flaps of the curtains and lit the back of her companion's head. The prince—for that was what he was, to her lingering disbelief—seemed different in this hour's light than before. He looked...healthier. More vibrant. As though he was gaining strength from the approaching night where others would be deprived of it.

When his lips left her skin after the lightest of brushes he glanced up at her while his head was still bowed over her fingers, and it struck Integra that this was the first time a boy near her age had ever kissed her, either as a greeting or else, and it made her blush. The bizarrerie that was his "name" escaped her for a moment as she stared down at him. He really was quite good-looking, was he not? Now that he seemed strangely livelier, she could even call him beautiful. Even with the red eyes.

_The most beautiful of roses possesses the sharpest thorns._

She jerked her hand back faster than it was polite. "You seem to have a problem with mood swings,  _Your Highness_. Barely an hour ago you were threatening to kill me."

"That's all water under the bridge, now. Don't you agree? You have told me your name and I mine. An introduction. We've cleaned the slate."

She just looked at him exasperatedly and he smiled a wide, lazy smile. Fine. She would give him this truce. He sat there, unblemished, as if he had never been blinded or hit or broken, erasing by his visage alone whatever animosity had existed prior between them. It was as though she had arrived for the first time carrying the tea tray, and they were exchanging their first words...

Speaking of the tea tray. She had observed him drink the Darjeeling. He had not seemed too happy about it because she saw him glare at the cup, but he had drank it, and he looked none the worse. It was a perfectly ordinary cup of Darjeeling, of course. But even a perfectly ordinary substance can have adverse effects on...certain beings.

His name.  _Dracula._ She bristled. Who were they kidding? Did his eyes mean that he deserved to be shunned? Did his aversion to the sun mean that he deserved to be neglected? Did his regeneration mean that he deserved to be malnourished? To call him the son of the Devil was practically an insult to the legacy of her ancestors who had confronted actual spawns of the dark. He was a child, a human child just like her. He could act as charming and confident as he wanted to now and it would not make a difference. It was stuck in her mind forever. The way he had curled into himself. The way he had tried to make her leave. And one word, out of all the others he had said, that she kept repeating over and over.

 _Please,_  he had said.

She knew without pressing her ear to his chest that he had a beating heart. Anyone with a heart deserved a chance. He had the makings of a monster but he was not that far gone yet. She could do this.

"Is that really your name—'Dracula'?"

"That is what they call me," he repeated. "Why? You don't think much of it?" He crooked his head to the side as he gauged her reaction and for that moment he was the child he was supposed to be.

"Dracula. Son of the Dragon. Some may say son of the Devil."

His eyes glowed. "And what do you say?"

"It's an unhappy name. Either way it makes you a monster." She said the last word quietly.

"It's not like I had much of a choice in it," he murmured. "I am a nameless prince. I was never christened—the dear king didn't bother to. They call me Dracula because they have no other word for me. To them I might as well be the Devil's."

Integra could not believe it. "That's...cruel."

"Humans have given names those that they fear since the beginning of time, Integra," Dracula said, his tone detached. "Names give form, identity and in the end make it a corporeal  _thing_  to be destroyed.

"You're here now," he continued, wondering where all this honesty was coming from but unable to stop, "and you must know that I am more than what I seem. You are perhaps the longest that has lasted in my presence." At this she met his eyes challengingly and he raised his teacup to her in mock salute. "It's dark; teatime is over and surely, someone is looking for you. Why are you still here, Miss Hellsing? If it's for your cloak here it is." He handed her the cashmere and she took it. It was cool to the touch. "Nothing binds you to this room now. You are free to leave as you wish. I won't stop you." His eyes dimmed, and his voice grew soft. "I won't."

"I want to know you," Integra said.

The red light of the receding sun illuminated his wry smile. "Am I to be your experiment or perhaps your charity case?"

"What I am proposing," she said, bypassing his preconceptions, "is for us to be friends."

His jaw may have dropped a bit.

"Friends," he deadpanned.

Integra nodded seriously. "Friends. I'm like you in this castle—a stranger. My family has been out of country for years that we hardly know anyone here. I—I don't get along with my peers. I've never been around them much to begin with, and honestly, I think they're dimwits." The prince laughed out then and she was caught off-guard at the sound. It was infectious and she found herself giggling with him. "You think so, too?"

"They're a bunch of spoiled little brats that's never done anything by themselves. Of course I think they're dimwits," he said scornfully.

"Then we have something in common." She grinned and he was drawn to the white of her teeth against her dark skin. "Not to mention, you're the longest that's lasted in my presence as well."

The air settled between them.

"So? What do you say?"

He set his cup down on the table.

"You drive a hard bargain, Miss Hellsing. You have made it impossible to say no to you."

She smiled, victorious. "Shall we shake on it?"

"Let's."

When their hands met, for the second time, one jolted at the cold and the other went slack at the warmth, only to grasp it tightly again. He was never, ever letting go of this warmth.

"One thing, though," Integra said. "I refuse to call you by that name. It's not so much a name as it's a curse."

"What do you propose, then?"

They still held hands as Integra's eyes flickered downward in thought, and back up again to his upon making a decision.

"Why don't I give you a new name?"

xx

xx

Walter glanced at the clock. They were running a bit late. Damn that Richard. He should have never let Integra go with him.

xx

xx

His eyes, very wide and very red, clashed against her blue fire, gauging her seriousness. When she did not back down, he parted his lips.

"I would like that very much."

xx

xx

Anderson stopped doling out mashed potatoes to the children. He could feel it happening. Something, beyond the woods, beyond the water.

"Um...Father? The potatoes..."

"Ah, yes. Sorry about that."

xx

xx

"You have an idea?"

"Well..."

xx

xx

"Well? Can you do it?" The Queen asked.

Richard discreetly dabbed at his forehead with his handkerchief. This had not been exactly what he had in mind when the Queen had asked for him. "I'll see what I can do, Your Highness."

"Excellent!"

A maid entered and curtsied. "Sorry to interrupt, Your Highness, but I've a message from the physician. He's asked to confirm with you if anyone at court has a broken nose? He says he's heard it relayed from a girl named Integral."

"Integral?" The Queen and Richard exclaimed in unison.

The Queen frowned. The Hellsing girl. Something was going on.

xx

xx

_Once upon a time, a wise witch said the following:_

_A NAME, once it has left your mouth, it cannot be uncalled. It cannot be nullified. People don't understand how strongly they're tied down because of it. But they continue to use that lock. A name is something living and sometimes, it can even tie down a person's life._

xx

xx

_"Alucard."_

There. She said it.

The boy blinked. His skin prickled. He felt as though something momentous had come down between them.

They had still not let go of each other's hand.

"Alucard..." he said, testing it out.

Then he snickered. "Bravo, you've turned it backwards. How clever of you."

The tension was broken, as was their handshake. Integra scowled at him. "You shut up. Make your own if you're so great at it."

"Now, where's the fun in that? And you shouldn't be so rude to your new friend."

"Argh!" Integra swiveled around. "I don't know why I bothered."

Before she could return to her seat to simmer in indignation and a small bit of embarrassment, however, he caught her hand. "I'm only joking, of course. I love it. You've honored me."

"If you're sure," she said caustically.

"I am," he said.

He already felt different.

Integra relaxed. "I didn't think you'd be comfortable with a whole new name, truthfully. Regardless of what it meant, it's been with you for so long."  _It'll always be a part of you,_  she added silently.

He inclined his head. "You are very wise."

 _Alucard—_ that was his name now. Did the girl know what she had done that evening? Did the boy? Fate was shaped by the tiniest choices of man, yet as the sun disappeared for that day, the girl had the vague notion that somehow, she had managed to tilt the world on its axis.

Integra shook her head. What an odd train of thought.

She was going to ask about her cravat that he had wrapped around his left hand when she heard clattering footsteps and the door of the library burst open.

_"There you are!"_

The prince dropped her hand and hissed at the voice. The Queen barged in with Richard behind her.

"Uncle Richard?" Integra gasped.

"What did I tell you about staying put, you troublemaker?" Richard snapped, marching forward and dragging Integra off; the prince growled and moved to intercept her but was blocked by the Queen. The woman stared frantically down at him. "What were you two doing? What's happened here?"

The prince looked up at her obliquely, a picture of innocence if not for the murderous intent beneath the frame. "Whatever are you so worked up about? We were just having a conversation and a lovely cup of tea, mother dearest. Integra," he called out to the girl who was at the doorway struggling with her uncle and digging her heels into the carpet, "I would much like to see you again. Tomorrow, if that is fine with you. I'll show you my  _garden_ —" he pressed down on the word and to his satisfaction, the Queen shuddered. "—What's left of it, anyway."

Integra planted her feet firmly to the floor and turned to him. She smiled in promise. "Yes, I would like that. I'll see you soon, Alucard."

"What's that she called you?" The Queen whispered.

With one last glance Integra let herself be dragged off by her uncle. The boy sighed, bereft. Without her his library reverted to the cold, miserable place it had been. He squeezed his fists to replicate the warmth she had imparted on them, and his left snagged on the cloth he had wrapped around it.

Oh, right. She had left her cravat. The stained red strip of cloth was in the same shade of his roses. He ran over it with his thumb. It was a promise. The joy inside him bubbled and overflowed. The child newly named Alucard laughed loudly into the stillness of the night.

"What are you laughing about, you unholy creature?" He had forgotten she was still here, the foolish Queen. He grinned with all his teeth.

"Oh, mother dearest. You have given me the most marvelous gift. What a wonderful tea party it has been."

He had met her, his equal, and she was every bit as perfect as he had imagined.

xx

xx

xx

xx

* * *

 

NOTES

The wise witch quote is originally from Ichihara Yuuko, a character in  _XXX HOLiC_ , one of CLAMP's works which I personally feel contains philosophies that are compatible with  _Hellsing_ 's. I changed it slightly to fit this chapter; the original quote talked about words, not names.

Gratuitous  _Harry Potter_ reference.

Enrico Maxwell, Heinkel and Yumie are cameos and will probably not be making a comeback in this story.

I listened to the  _Bravely Default_ concert on loop while revising this chapter and I just can't not give it credit. If you are interested, please look it up on YouTube. It's a gorgeous performance, especially the Final Boss Battle Medley. It and the Ba'al Boss Battle Theme were crucial in the completion of this installment.


	6. V

xx

**V**

xx

If there are three Fates, as mythology suggests, at least one of them must be a sadist. Is it the one who spins, the one who draws or the one who cuts the thread? When the finished tapestry is laid before their eyes who is the one that takes a needle and scratches the surface?

In his notes, Abraham Van Helsing described the most damned of all creatures, the one that preyed upon the warmth of the living to sate its lack thereof. A body that just narrowly averted its decay, held up on borrowed blood, passing down its affliction with its scythe-like teeth. Yet here Abraham posed a question. Who was its origin? The wretched soul that hated himself so much that he would willingly stoop down and take the first sip of blood?

Vampires have been extinct in this world for many years now.

xx

xx

When Integra returned, missing her cravat and furious with Richard but with an aura of accomplishment about her, Walter had thought that she had perhaps gotten into a fight. And won, of course. The only concern he had about this scenario was the tendency of courtiers to exact revenge in methods that Integra, and by extension he himself, would deem cowardly. Integra upheld honor, valor and mano a manos; she would be unfamiliar with the way they used fabrications, intrigue and gossip.

Not that he himself could not be very  _persuasive_  when the situation called.

But what she told him was surprising.

"I've made a friend, Walter, and I've promised to see him tomorrow."

He should have been overjoyed. Integra's lack of friends was always a source of worry for him and Arthur. Sometimes they wondered if they had done more harm than good in taking her from one destination to the next, not allowing her the time to develop relationships with people other than the two of them. That she had made a friend in their homeland so quickly upon their permanent return should have been a relief.

But there was this nagging feeling at the back of his head.

When she identified this "friend," the feeling became validated.

"The prince," Walter said. He was at a loss for words.

Integra cast him a shrewd glance. "I suppose you've heard something?"

"You know that is my job, my lady." He bowed. "It turns out that I have indeed heard some...rumors pertaining to His Highness."

"And I'm pretty sure I can guess what those rumors pertain to." Integra was getting ready for bed, brushing her hair. She was tired. All that had happened seemed like a dream, only when she closed her eyes, she saw those red ones beyond a curtain of black curls, and the events ran kaleidoscopic in her mind.

"I do confess my surprise at your befriending him," Walter said. "I did warn you of the strange happenings in the castle."

Integra had no doubt that Alucard was  _the_  strange happening that Walter had alluded to, but after today she was unable to muster the appropriate emotion. She just knew somehow that despite everything, Alucard was of no danger to her.

She gazed at the pouch of rose petals sitting in front of the mirror. She recalled sleepily that Walter also had warned her about a garden...and that she was going to visit a garden the very next day...but then she yawned and could not be bothered to think anymore. "Let me check on my father once more, and then I'll go to bed."

Walter nodded. He would not press the issue with her tonight, although the nagging feeling remained. Maybe his contacts were misinformed. If none other than Integra had deemed the mysterious prince a friend, then surely he could not be all that bad.

So that was how he found himself accompanying his young lady to the castle the next afternoon. It was warmer than yesterday, though overcast. Fortunately, Sirs Penwood and Islands had come to visit Arthur at the manor and since they would be taking hours to catch up, it had not been too much trouble to convince Integra that her father would be perfectly fine without him. Walter had never seen Integra so anticipant before. She fidgeted in her seat with the drawstrings of the rose pouch as her eyes shifted to the carriage window periodically.

The prince was waiting alone at the front gates when they arrived, not a valet in sight. He was dressed in a white shirt with a red cravat, grey trousers and a sable cloak, and was holding a black lace umbrella despite the muted sky. He was a blot of ink against the pristine landscape. When the wind swept a bit of loose snow into his eyes, they fluttered and closed, the lashes resting on his pale cheeks.

When he heard the coach, they opened in the brightest, brilliant red, and his lips unfurled to a wide, delighted smile.

He leapt forward, twirling his umbrella, as the object of his fascination climbed out assisted by an elderly man. She had on a blue cravat today that matched her blue velvet skirt. "Integra."

She beamed and hurried over to him. "Alucard."

His own smile deepened; in appreciation of the name she had gifted him, he gave her a little bow.

Behind them, Walter blinked twice; first at the familiarity, second at the name. Had there been a "Prince Alucard" in his information?

"We're lucky that the weather is so agreeable," Alucard said, as though the gloomy weather was perfect for a walk. To him, Integra supposed, it probably was. He held out a gloved hand in invitation. "Ready?"

"Er, yes." Integra turned to her caretaker. "We'll be off then, Walter."

Walter raised his brows. "Alone?"

It was then that Alucard really looked at the man that had accompanied Integra. As long as it was not the obnoxious uncle from yesterday—and he would have already broken half the bones in the man's hand if it was—he did not care. But he realized that the newcomer held far more interesting possibilities. "Oh..." he dragged out. "It's you."

The butler's spine stiffened, and his eyes hardened upon recognition. "Your Highness."

Integra looked back and forth between them and frowned. "You two know each other?"

"We've met before," Alucard breathed. "What a fascinating coincidence!"

If possible, Walter's face grew even stonier.

An increasingly hostile atmosphere was brewing between the pair of them and Integra placed her hands on her hips to reprove them when the gesture alerted her of something else. "Drat." She patted the sides of her cloak. "I've forgotten something in the coach." Integra fixed them with a stern look. "I don't know what's the matter with you two but I expect it to be resolved by the time I get back here." She rushed off.

Alucard watched her. "Such authority. I've never met anyone like her." The red eyes shifted and clashed against the monocle. "And you, her retainer. Tell me, did you give her my roses like you said?"

"What are your intentions with Miss Hellsing?" Walter asked.

"Straight to the point, too. Are all Hellsings and their retainers so blunt?"

"You may be the prince, Your Highness, our prince—but I am always first and foremost a servant of the Hellsing name." The butler's monocle flashed. "So I ask again, what are your intentions? My lady is more than capable of defending herself. But I will not stand by and allow others to leech off her trust."

Alucard twirled his umbrella. "You're just concerned for your mistress; for that I will forgive you for speaking to me thusly." The umbrella stilled. Beneath it his eyes loomed like twin suns. "You needn't worry. Integra is very important to me."

Walter clenched his jaw. He was not sure if that was a good thing.

"There she comes, our mutual keeper," the prince said, dismissing the butler. "We'll have to continue this lovely conversation another time. I trust you won't follow us."

Integra neared the two males and regarded them carefully. "Is everything alright now?"

"We've only had a disagreement on winter gardening," Alucard reassured her.

She narrowed her eyes. "Winter gardening."

"Yes. But we've wasted enough time as it is." Alucard grasped Integra's hand and tugged her forward. "This way."

"Fine..." Integra followed after him. Over her shoulder she shouted, "I'll be back in an hour, Walter! Don't be out in the cold!"

Walter C. Dornez, at sixty years old, had thought himself seasoned for anything. But as he watched the juxtaposed pair disappear into the castle grounds, watched the girl he thought of as his granddaughter walk off with a veritable monster, he buried his face into his hands. He knew he had made a grievous mistake in stumbling upon that garden, in letting Integra go with Richard, in giving her the rose.

xx

xx

"Integra, are you very fond of your butler?"

They had walked in silence until then, past the well-manicured front of the castle, toward the back where none ventured unless they were stupid, lost, or suicidal. Nature pulled free from its man-made restraints and flourished here, spawning an abundance of weeds that peeked stubbornly through the snow and made the ground treacherous. Thus was the excuse Alucard used to keep holding onto Integra's hand.

"He's taken care of me since birth. Of course I am," Integra said warily.

"Hmm."

Integra was bemused by his enigmatic question, his more enigmatic response, and above all their joined hands. Both were gloved, but nonetheless it was the longest she had ever had contact with him.

Alucard sighed inwardly at the knowledge that getting rid of the butler would not be easy given Integra's obvious affection for him. He settled on another approach. "I'm glad that he cares for you. Because truly, that uncle of yours from yesterday was dreadful."

"Oh, Uncle Richard." Integra's nose scrunched up in distaste. "He's always been like that. We've never gotten along. How could we, when he blames my father for 'ruining' me?"

"Ruining you?" Alucard repeated. He gripped his umbrella tighter and imagined it was Richard's neck. She, ruined? The world might as well be apocalyptic. "What kind of drivel is that?"

He wondered if she would be upset if he killed this uncle.

"It's because I'm not ladylike enough, so he says." Her shoulders drooped a little. Integra tried her best to ignore the hurtful things Richard said, but he was still her uncle and it stung. "I never sat down to learn embroidery or crochet or whatever it is that girls my age do." She looked at him. "You would know. Am I that different from the girls at court?"

He would have answered, if they had not reached a craggy, sunken part of the path. He reluctantly parted with her hand, only to step down first, turn and stretch his out to her. She stared at the gloved hand for a moment, her eyes flicking up to his face, which was tilted to the side with a half-smile. She took it with a quiet huff, gathering the side of her skirt and carefully making it down.

An Alucard who was not trapped inside the castle was, Integra discovered, an Alucard that was not quite like the facets she had previously seen. He was more relaxed, attentive and, daresay, chivalrous. He not only waited for her and assisted her, but also held the very unnecessary parasol above both of their heads. To Integra, who had mostly been around elderly men, this kind of attention given by someone in her age group—a prince, no less—was new and disconcerting.

She had long since discarded fantasies of dashing princes who saved their princesses in favor of knights who slew dragons. But the princes in her storybooks had never been anything like Alucard. If they had, she would have not lost interest in them so quickly.

So when they started walking again and he finally said, "You are," she felt a bit let down.

"Oh," Integra said, but he carried on.

"You are different, but that only makes you better than them." Unbeknownst to him, she blushed faintly. "You are indeed smarter—although that isn't saying much since most of them can't carry a conversation without mentioning the weather twice." And in his case, drawing back in fear, but he was not going to say that. "You're braver."

"Am I?"

"You're here with me, aren't you?"

She whipped her head around, to reprimand him for his self-depreciating comment, but saw the slight humor in his eyes. She let out a laugh. "Honestly."

When she did, her mellow blonde hair bounced, and behind her glasses her eyes shined like blue diamonds.

 _You're prettier_ , he thought.

"See? You don't need to worry about being like those vapid little things."

"I don't. At all. Besides, I don't need to be like a lady." She smiled in determination. "I'm going to be a knight."

Alucard abruptly halted in his tracks and simply stared at her with the oddest expression on his face. Something that was a sum of amusement plus admiration plus disappointment. She pinpointed on the last and was miffed. "Do you doubt me?"

His red irises curved downward and then looked straight ahead again and they resumed their walk. "Not at all. It suits you." His voice was strangely subdued, but when she studied him he chuckled. "I should have known. I've heard of you Hellsings. Your family has been knights for as long as this kingdom has been standing."

Integra perked up, momentarily forgetting his peculiar reaction. "Yes. Our family has a long history of serving the crown as knights. There never has been a female knight, but I don't care. I'm going to be one."

He smiled brittlely, although she did not see it, hidden it was behind a curtain of hair. "I'm sure you will."

"It's a bit underwhelming though, when I think about serving under the king and queen. I don't get the impression that they're particularly just." The notion that her statement could come off as treasonous did not occur to her.

Alucard bit back a harsh laugh. She had no idea how correct she was.

"I guess that means I'll serve under you someday." Integra did not know what to think about that. Without any reason it sounded off, as if it were a faraway dream that knew it would never come to fruition. "How strange that would be."

Alucard said nothing. What could he say? Could he say to the girl whom he had met a mere twenty-four hours ago that he had fantasized about them as betrothed to each other, a prince and a princess standing side by side as perfect equals and perfect opposites? Could he say that he had dreamed of her as his queen, to whose feet he would lay down the universe? This girl who, unwittingly, had accepted his rose?

_The knight saves the princess. The knight slays the dragon._

They came upon a fork in the path, and the prince led her to the left. "It's just up ahead, now." They said nothing more of knighthoods.

xx

xx

The garden, Integra could see, had taken the brunt of winter none too gently. Half the roses had already been sheared off and others were frosted over. But Integra could also see that they had once been beautiful and were beautiful still, in a tragic way. She cupped one blossom and its petals, too large for her palm, spilled between her fingers.

This rose.

She was conscious of the pouch of petals in her cloak.

_This rose was same as the one Walter had given her._

It was, then, Alucard's rose. Curiouser and curiouser how their paths crossed.

Alucard stood a few steps back, watching her. If the butler had not lied and had indeed delivered his roses, then she would have certainly figured it out by now. He would wait for her reaction. He sat down on a stone bench that was the sole fixture in his garden and noted unhappily that the sky seemed to be clearing.

Integra deliberated. The garden Walter had warned her about would be this very garden. Yet as she stood in its center holding the rose, she felt neither forbiddance nor trepidation. She merely felt a deep sense of tragedy in its earth. What could possibly be sad about a little rose garden? Even one that was so far from the castle?

"Why do you keep your garden here?" she asked.

Alucard shrugged. "What beauty is an oasis if it is not in a desert?"

"You do realize you're essentially saying your roses are ugly, right?" She caressed the one she was holding with her thumb. It crumbled. "They're beautiful."

He did not reply, and she had to turn to look at him. His visage twisted in a variety of emotions before settling on gratitude. "Thank you."

She let go of the rose and sat down on the bench beside him, gazing up at the faint sunlight that passed through the crevices of his umbrella. "Don't you get lonely, Alucard?" She herself had never had friends, but she at least had always had her father and Walter and they loved her. Alucard, though...both the library and the garden were such estranged, abandoned places.

Alucard seemed unconcerned. "Solitude suits me. I find that others are...overwhelmed by my presence."

"Well, I'm not."

He snorted. "You are an anomaly."

Integra grinned. "We are misfits."

Something blossomed in Alucard's chest then, something so pure and delicate that his roses would never, in infinite realities, compare. His hand trembled around his umbrella. She sat there with that smile of hers and her blue eyes searching his and suddenly he was unable to bear seeing her in his godforsaken, absolutely damned and absolutely vile garden.

Unaware of his inner turmoil, Integra sighed, watching the shadows under their feet grow darker with the increasing sun. "You keep away in these secluded places so no one can see your face. It reminds me of a story I heard when I was abroad. It's of a prince, like you."

"Oh?" It came out strangled and he hoped she did not notice. "Do tell."

"It was in Cairo, when I was in Khan el-Khalili with my father. He was standing to the side talking to a merchant, and he and his wife could speak English. The wife was very kind to me. She had many stories to tell, but one of them was from the faraway East. It was the story of the Prince of Lanling."

"The Prince of Lanling..."

"The Prince of Lanling was a beautiful man, so beautiful that when he led his troops to battle, he had to wear a mask so as not to distract them with his beauty. He was noble leader, generous to his people, but the emperor was threatened by his popularity and poisoned him."

"That's not much of a story."

"That's not all. The merchant's wife told me another story of the Lanling Prince, one that didn't paint him in such a favorable light."

"And that was...?"

But what, exactly, was the other story Integra did not have the chance to tell. A stone came flying through the air, hitting her in the head.

"Ouch!"

Alucard dropped his umbrella and jumped up immediately. "Integra!"

"I'm fine—I—" She clutched the right side of her hairline, where it began to shallowly bleed. "Something hit me..."

"Didn't mean to hit you. Was aiming for  _him_ ," a new voice said.

The perpetrator sauntered out from behind a shrub. He was near their ages, but taller and heavier, with brown hair and eyes and a pinched face. He was dressed in hunting gear and was hefting a rifle on one shoulder.

Pressing her wound, Integra marched up to him. "What is the meaning of this?"

"Like I said, didn't mean to hit you. Though seeing as you're with him, you can't be that sane yourself."

The coldness in Integra's voice dropped to deathly degrees. "Watch your mouth. That's your prince you're talking about."

The boy sniffed. "No one around here cares about that, little girl. No one in their right mind takes his crown seriously. Who would serve a demon? I sure the hell won't." He looked her up and down and stuck out a hand. "You're the Hellsing girl, right? I think I saw you at tea yesterday. Sorry about your head. Name's Thomas, second son of the Duke of Somerton. You seem decent enough for a little girl, so if you were just waiting for an excuse to leave this freak, now's your chance."

Now that he mentioned it, she did think that she had seen his sort of face, but what did that matter? He was definitely a suicidal one.

Integra did not even deign to glance at the appendage. "If you don't care that you've insulted your prince, then you should care that you've insulted my friend. I will make you care and I won't forgive you.  _And don't call me little girl_."

It happened in a flash, before she could blink.

Alucard moved, quickly and quietly that she did not notice him until he tackled the boy into the ground as easily as he would have a puppet. There was no strain visible in his lithe frame when he slammed the larger boy's throat into the snow. His face was warped into the sheer essence of malice, his eyes redder that she had ever seen them, throbbing in their sockets, threatening to drip their acidic pigment onto Thomas' skin. In his other hand, he held a sharp rock.

_The Prince of Lanling was beautiful. He wore a hideous mask to hide his face..._

_But this is not that kind of fairy tale, is it?_

Integra did not think. She merely grabbed. Her fingers wrapped around his wrist. "Alucard. Stop."

Her voice was surprisingly calm.

He did not seem to hear her. His arm shook madly in her grasp. At the opposite end Thomas was starting to make choking sounds.

"Alucard, stop. He isn't worth it."

Still nothing.

" _Alucard_."

"He hurt you," he seethed.

"Yes, but it's not as bad as the broken nose I gave you yesterday." When his arm remained taut, she spoke more firmly. "You do not use a cannon to catch a rabbit, Alucard. Let me handle this."

His muscles finally slackened, and the rock fell to the snow. Alucard backed away step by step as if it physically pained him to do so, and leaned into a nearby rosebush.

"Fucking monster..." Thomas groaned, getting up and making toward him.

Her glasses flashed and she blocked him. With her pitiless gaze she gave the impression of being thrice her size. "A head taller than us and a gun at your disposal yet you rely on a coward's way to try to scare us off. Utterly deplorable."

"Are you out of your mind? He's a bloody mad monster, can't you see that?"

"Let me stop you for a moment and say that the only reason I made him let you go is not because you don't deserve it. It's because I was the one wronged by you, not him. But if you keep running that tongue off that certainly wouldn't remain the case, would it?" Integra stepped closer. "I would remember, Thomas, that whatever your personal beliefs might be, you are in the private garden of the heir of this realm. You may be the son of a duke, but can you really say that you can get away with provoking the prince?

He gulped.

She kicked him hard in the shin and he squealed. "Get out of my sight. And if I were you, I would keep this to yourself if you don't want to be found out you were cowed by a  _little girl_."

The boy ran away as fast as he could with his limp.

Integra turned to Alucard. He was surrounded by his roses, his eyes hooded, a sliver of crimson watching her.

"Like I said," she said. "Dimwits."

His head ducked and the mass of black curls trembled in silent laughter. He reached for his neck and untied the red cravat, which suddenly looked quite familiar.

"Wait, is that mine?" Integra gaped.

Alucard reached out and dabbed at the fine line of blood that had trickled down her face. "Hard to say whose it is, now. It seems that it was never meant to be an ordinary cravat." His hand shook and his eyes rounded. "He would have died."

This time, she believed him.

The sun was out, and he looked more tired than before. Integra pushed his hand aside to pick the umbrella up from the ground. She settled down on the snow, amidst the flowers, and so did he beside her. She propped the umbrella above them.

"Tell me the story, Integra," Alucard whispered. "Of the Lanling Prince."

Underneath the umbrella the world was divided evenly in black and white. Integra had been to many places, had read many, many books, and knew that sometimes black bled into white and white bled into black and there would be no boundary, just a grey horizon.

Her breath escaped her, white and ghostly, as she began.

"The Prince of Lanling was bloodthirsty in battle. So much, that he slowly lost his mind. It was not until his wife sacrificed herself that he was brought to his senses. She spat blood on his mask, waking him from his madness."

Integra pressed her stained fingers to the snow.

"He was an invincible general, but his story is not one about victory. His story is one about regret."

xx

xx

xx

xx

* * *

 

NOTES

There are quotes similar in vein to the "don't use cannon to hunt a rabbit" quote, but mine is from Dracule Mihawk from  _One Piece._

Gao Changgong, the Prince of Lanling ( _Lanlingwang_ ) is a Chinese historical figure who governed Lanling County in the Northern Qi dynasty in the fifth century. His recorded history is essentially the first half of Integra's narration: a beautiful and noble warrior who wore a mask in battle, who died at the emperor's hands. The second half, of his wife and of him being bloodthirsty, is probably fabrication. I have only ever heard it told in the drama  _The Empress of China_ , starring Fan Bingbing. But his life is a tragic tale nonetheless. (On a completely unrelated note, if you are looking to start an obsession over Chinese historical dramas, try  _The Legend of Zhen Huan_.)


	7. VI

xx

**6**

xx

Sometimes, the only hope that is left is not a hero but a monster.

xx

xx

Silver irritated him. It did not have a profound effect, but it did make his skin prickle unpleasantly. It so happened that the mirror in his chamber had a silver frame; when he looked into it, he saw his face caged in a circle with no exit.

Winter came and went and so did spring and summer. Astounding how fast time flies. Yet their afternoon in his garden seemed like yesterday. The butler had been furious when Integra returned with her head wound. "I kicked the one who was responsible, Walter. Don't fret," she had said. But Alucard suspected that the butler had kept on fretting. He was likely the reason that she had not been able to frequent the castle. He really should get around to killing the man someday.

Still, Integra had tried to visit him as often as she could, which was two or three times a month. They had tea together in his library. She had asked to see his garden again, but he had been unwilling. "I'm in the process of rearranging," he had said. And he had been. Rearranging his thoughts, that is. One day he stood in its center, lips curved downward. His roses bloomed in the spring air, red as blood, pulpy as an organ and  _screaming._

The bones, the flesh. They scuttled beneath his feet.

_I don't want her here._

Yet she had looked so pretty there, and so at ease.

_I don't. Not here. Not this glorified graveyard._

As if she belonged there.

_Madness!_

He pruned them a little, watered them, and left. They had never needed fertilizer.

She told him about her travels and he let her borrow his books, and their precious few afternoons together continued in that fashion until Sir Arthur Hellsing's health deteriorated. From then on they had exchanged letters. The last he had received from her was dated ten days ago, hours before her father's death.

_They say he won't make it through the day. I have to make preparations. I will see you when everything is settled._

It was placidly written, but he could sense the grief saturated in each stroke of each word, especially in the corner of the paper where a teardrop had landed and dried. He had pressed the tip of his nose to the barely visible blot and wondered what it felt like to be loved and grieved over to such an extent.

That evening, Sir Hellsing did pass away. He heard it buzzed among the courtiers.

 _"I wonder what will happen to his daughter, now,"_ they had said.

Nothing, if he could help it.

Ten days ago. Alucard now sat in front of the mirror he should have thrown out long since and tied the familiar red cravat around his neck. As always, he did it himself. Not only did he loathe others touching his, but servants could be such a bother. Striking fear into their hearts was all fun and games until one of them slopped basin water all over the place. So he woke up himself, drew the water himself, washed himself, dressed himself, and never really understood the need for a valet...until recently.

"Dillon," he called.

Dillon was the unfortunate soul who had found himself elevated from stable boy to personal valet of the prince on his thirty-fifth day of employment in the court. He had almost pissed himself. But when he managed not to, the prince had crinkled his eyes in a way that shaped them into red crescents. "You'll do," he had said.

Heaven evidently took a pity on him, as his duties mostly had him away from the prince, on a horse, delivering letters to one Miss Hellsing. On his sixty-sixth day of employment, one month as the prince's valet, he decided that his master was not  _too_  bad. His eyes were the Devil's and his smile was eerie, but he was not cruel, as the rumors had suggested.

Dillon entered and bowed. "Your Highness."

"Has there been any word from Miss Hellsing?"

"None, Your Highness."

Alucard turned, very slowly, in his chair and Dillon started to sweat. Should he apologize? But it was not even his fault!

"Is that so," the prince said.

He gave the cravat one last tug before giving his valet his full attention. "You said, Dillon, that when you visited Hellsing Manor yesterday with my letter, they rebuffed you at the gates."

"Y-yes, Your Highness."

"They know better than to turn away my letter. Integra would never let them."

Lightning struck then, illuminating the dimly lit chamber, and it took all of Dillon's wits not to squeak. The prince had looked truly terrifying in the brief glare. He would have said that the shadows seemed to be elongating, twisting in their nooks and crannies as thunder, accompanied by the dull, telltale sounds of autumn raindrops, comprised nature's orchestra.

Something was off. Alucard's eyes sharpened.  _Something..._

"Dillon, go make ready my horse."

"Y-your Highness?"

Lightning struck. "Must I tell you twice?"

"No, Your Highness!" He did squeak this time. "But it's storming out there! It's dangerous!"

"Storms can be very good cover, don't you know?" Alucard smiled and his teeth gleamed. "Let's see if that manor can weather this one."

If she could not come to him, he would go to her.

xx

xx

**The day prior**

_My daughter, Integral Fairbrook Wingates Hellsing, will be my sole heir, to lead this household and to serve this kingdom and this country with the integrity that befits her name._

Tan hands, sleeved in black, held the words.

The transcript of her father's will was frayed with perusal. Integra kept hold of it, this last vestige of her dear father. It had been an excruciating week of preparing his funeral, awaiting the guests, overseeing the documents of all that she would be inheriting. Paperwork, paperwork. She had been prepared for this. She had known her father was dying for years. But when he had gasped his final breath, she felt a little piece of her leave, too. Nothing would be the same again.

She would be knighted as Sir Hellsing soon, if only the Convention would take her seriously. They seemed to doubt her ability to be any sort of knight and, if she was being perfectly honest with herself, she could not blame them. She was barely twelve years old and a girl to boot. Yet again, if she was being perfectly honest with herself, they could continue on twiddling their mustaches until the end of time. She was  _not_  going to let her family legacy slip from her hands.

Walter had stuck with Integra during the entire ordeal and she had never loved him more. He was the only person left that was dear to her now.  _And Alucard!_  her mind rang out. Yes, that was right. Alucard. She missed him. She wondered if those courtiers, who twittered amongst themselves whenever she went to see him, knew how lovely his eyes could be. They were miniature sunrises upon a cold, white landscape.

Sunrises like this morning's, which she watched after waking with an ill feeling in her guts.

And true to her instincts, later that day her stomach plummeted at Walter's report.

"A problem in the ledger?"

"One that could affect your inheritance," the butler said gravely. "I would not have asked unless it was absolutely necessary. However, the bank is demanding immediate resolution." He hesitated. "My lady…"

"Walter," she sighed, "no one knows of the affairs of my father's accounts better than you do. You need to go and see to it. Uncle Richard may be a greedy man but he's not evil enough that he'd stoop lower."

"I hope you are right, my lady. I hope you are not overestimating him." Walter dropped his professionalism and gripped her shoulders. "Integra, please be careful. I know we don't have anything against Richard that indicates that he'll do anything drastic. But he's a right sneaky weasel and weasels bite when they're in a bind. Promise me you'll do everything in your power to avoid him."

"I promise."

She ignored the fact that the last time she had promised to do something, she had ended up roundabout not doing it anyway.

_Red sky at night, shepherds' delight._

_Red sky at morning, shepherds take warning!_

Clouds, thick and grey, were rolling into the sky when she saw Walter off. A bout of trepidation seized her as she watched his horse disappear, but she chased it away. For the entire day she kept to herself in one of the less used studies, pretending to read while keeping an ear out for any movement within the manor. It seemed that nothing was out of the ordinary. Indeed, since the funeral Richard had not acted out much, even during the reading of the will.

That, itself, should have seemed unusual, but she had been so, so preoccupied.

_Red sky at morning, shepherds take warning!_

Near the evening, she heard a noise outside and ran to the window. Squinting through her glasses, she could make out a familiar figure atop a horse at the gates. It was Dillon, Alucard's valet. That meant a letter for her. Normally, Dillon would cross the grounds, come to the door, and hand her the letter with a nervous bow. She knew, therefore, that something was irrevocably wrong when his horse backtracked.

_Red sky at morning, shepherds take warning!_

Integra dashed down the stairs to the front door. "Was that not a letter for me from the prince?" she asked the porter.

"I believe it was."

"Then why are they not letting him in? Tell those at the gates to turn him back at once!"

The porter gave her an evasive, almost apologetic look. "I'm afraid I cannot."

"What do you mean, you cannot?" Integra demanded.

"He means he won't answer to you, little girl."

She froze.

She pivoted. Richard was there, flanked by two men, blocking the stairs. He wore the face of the cat—no, the weasel—that swallowed the canary. "There you are, Integra. Where have you been all day?"

Integra stood ramrod straight. "Uncle."

"You're just in time. We need to have a chat. Namely, about the will my useless brother left."

Integra's eyes shifted from one person to another—the treacherous porter, Richard and his two accomplices—and she weighted her options. She knew that the porter was a timid man and doubted that he was here other than to prevent her from getting out. Richard and his men, on the other hand, were armed. She cursed inwardly. She was an absolute bloody idiot for leaving her own weapons just because she was dressed in her mourning gown.

Her only viable option was the hallway to the right, the entrance of which was marked by a suit of armor. It led to the kitchens and the servants' quarters. It would be empty enough; their personnel had never been a large number to begin with. And the lesser the better; if her worst suspicions were correct, any remaining would be compliant to Richard.

Integra kept her voice steady and looked directly at Richard as she walked in a slow circle toward the hallway. "If you have something to say to me, uncle, you may say it where you stand."

"Don't patronize me, girl!" Richard spat. "You worthless thing, you think you can take control of Hellsing now that your father is gone? You think you can give out orders and people will follow? Do you know how long I've waited for your old man to kick the bucket?  _Twenty years!_

"Now, I don't want to do this the hard way, Integra. So here's what you'll do. You'll write that you forfeit all rights to Hellsing to your dear uncle. You, a little girl, can't possibly handle the responsibility. Be a good niece and get a pen and paper."

"No," she said clearly.

"What did you say?"

"Are you deaf? I said no!"

She ran. She veered behind the suit of armor and that was when the first gunshot rang out. The bullet ricocheted off the armor and she felt her heart stop even as she kept running.

She heard Richard laugh. "I'll let you run, little girl. Do you think you can forever?"

_He'll kill me. Oh Walter, I was a damn fool. I should have never let you leave._

She tripped and the pouch of petals fell from her pocket and spilled. She knelt there, blood pounding in her ears, her breath leaving in heavy gasps, horribly aware of the leisurely steps coming from a distance. She could run. She could hide. But there were only so many rooms she could turn to. It would be a mere matter of time until Richard checked every one of them. Where then? Where?

Then before her eyes, a petal drifted away...into a ventilation shaft right above her.

xx

xx

**Present day**

Nightmares fester within the dark, the turbulent and the loud. He was no exception. Alucard left his horse, the poor spooked thing, in the forest and started to walk. His riding cloak was soaked, and water dripped from his bangs, yet he opened up his umbrella and approached the gates of Hellsing Manor.

Aptly named, for today, hell would sing.

The two gatekeepers did a double take when they saw the wraithlike creature with a belated umbrella emerge from the edge of the forest road. They relaxed somewhat when they realized it was the figure of a boy, though it was more than unsettling how they could not see his face.

Lightning flashed.

"I'm here to see Miss Integral Hellsing."

One of them recovered. "No visitors are permitted today."

"Oh?" said the boy. "Is it Miss Hellsing's orders?"

"No—" the man started to say but the other one elbowed him. He was not supposed to say that! Yet the syllable was all Alucard needed to understand the situation.

"How unfortunate," he said with a theatric sigh. "I wanted to deliver her present in person. It's her birthday this week, did you know?"

Thunder rumbled.

"But you don't have a present with you," the second man, smarter than the first, said slowly, eyes narrowing.

Alucard smiled. "Good skills of observation," he said, before closing his umbrella and thrusting it into the man's stomach.

Blood gushed from the impalement, running off as diluted streams and mixing in the mud. The other guard was too shocked to react and before he knew it, he had his face grabbed and the back of his head slammed into the bars of the gate.

"Is Integra in there?" their nightmare asked, and the guard saw the red eyes at last. The stench of fear joined the smell of rain and blood as the man recognized him.

Alucard tutted. "You're not answering. Is that any way to treat your prince?" He squeezed the head into the metal and the man let out a muffled scream. "Integra. Is she in there? Is she alive?"

The man moaned and nodded as much as he could, eyeballs rolling in fear.

"Very good. Who is responsible for this? Don't tell me...it's the uncle, isn't it?"

Another frantic nod.

"And you thought that you could betray your new master for the likes of him.  _Bad dog_. As if there is anything more I hate than traitors."

The muffled screams of the guard grew more high-pitched and Alucard did not care to hear it any longer. He twisted the neck, and the body slumped to the wet ground.

Alucard dusted his hands on his trousers. He plucked his umbrella from the corpse and opened it again, twirling away the blood.

"Who says I didn't get a present?"

xx

xx

Hours upon hours upon hours of being stuck in the ventilation system and she was sleep-deprived, hungry and dehydrated. The ends had been either barred or unreachable. Integra, suspended in some hallway, curled up in the dusty space, breathed shallowly and made a decision. If the worst came to worst she would go and face Richard. She was a Hellsing and she would not go down without a fight. She would rather die by his bullet than die while in hiding.

It had been storming since morning, and the thunder boomed eminently destructive in the hollowness of the shaft. Her father had taught her to love storms. Wherever they were in the world, when there was a storm, he would take her outside and hold her as they watched the heavens blaze. "There's beauty in destruction, Integra," he had told her.

Her life was being destroyed. Was there beauty in that?

 _Why of course there is, my darling girl!_ she imagined her father saying.  _There's hope yet, isn't there?_

Was there?

Blearily she thought she heard a new sound amongst the rain, the thunder and the wind. Footsteps. Richard and his cronies, perhaps? She crawled to the nearest vent-hole and peered cautiously through the slots. The footsteps were getting louder. They sounded like one person's. They did not sound like an adult's.

They sounded wet.

When she saw the head of inky black hair, she could not believe it. The lack of sleep must have had gotten to her at last. This was impossible.

Yet that did not stop her from whispering, "Alucard?"

The head snapped up and she almost cried out when she met those crimson eyes. It was Alucard. He was here and his smile was beatific. "There you are, Integra. I must say, the hospitality of your staff leaves much to be desired."

"Alucard," Integra choked out. "What are you doing here? How did you—no, I'm not going to even ask. You have to leave! It's not safe!"

His smile remained the same but the fires of his irises intensified. "Leave you? With this lot? I think not." He shrugged. "Anyway, it's too late now. I'm afraid I got lost. Your house has far too many hallways."

Integra laughed shakily at the ridiculousness of it all. "This coming from a prince that lives in a castle?"

"Touché. As for what I'm doing here, well, it was a lovely day—"

She coughed.

"—and it's your birthday soon, I figured I might as well make the most of it."

She stared at him. "Alucard, my birthday isn't for another five days."

"I'm aware. And I plan to make it the absolute best." His eyes glittered. "Why don't you come down? I didn't meet anyone on my way here and I even used the front door." Strictly speaking. "Whoever is looking for you must be in another wing."

"You didn't meet anyone? Where's the porter?"

On the floor with a broken umbrella protruding from his chest. That particular attack had been the last straw for his handy little accessory. "I'm sure he was inconvenienced."

Integra pursed her lips, yet through the limited visual the vent offered he could glimpse that she was barely in a state to question the odds. The world flashed briefly in red as his rage surmounted toward those who had rendered her to this point. He dug his nails into his palm to rein in his temper and told her, "We could make our exit if we were stealthy about it. But quickly, before they come."

She pried the cover open. Tentatively she eyed the distance from the ceiling to the floor. Going up by climbing on furniture was one thing; going down without any such furniture was another.

Alucard looked amused, much to her annoyance. He held out his arms. "Jump. I'll catch you."

" _What?_ "

"You'll at least sprain something if you fall from that height and we can't have that. So jump into my arms and I'll catch you." He was very matter-of-fact about it.

She gazed down at him doubtfully. She knew he was strong, but he just did not look it!

He actually pouted. "Come now, don't I deserve the benefit of the doubt?"

Integra hesitated. Then, taking a deep breath, she jumped.

Alucard caught her exactly as he had promised. It was disconcerting to land in his arms, her head bumping on his chest which was cold and damp from the rain. Her ear came to rest on where his heart was, and it was beating; though, if it were another situation, she might have noticed it was slower than a normal human's.

She planted her feet on the floor, and his lips brushed against her ear.

"Perfect," he said.

He was surprised when Integra did not let go of him right away. Instead, she wrapped her arms tight around him, and he felt something warm dampen his shirt.

"Thank you," she gasped.

He held her tremulously, at a loss of what to do. He had never seen her cry before.

He wished he could go back, resurrect the dead and slaughter them again. He wished he could carve out their hearts. He wished he could bury them in his garden. That way, his garden would have meaning. For the first time in his life he had killed for someone else, for  _her_. The world as he had known it, the dreary, joyless plane upon which he had existed for so long, had shattered and rearranged itself with her as its crux.

And then she asked, "Alucard, tell me the truth. Did you kill them?"

_The gatekeepers? The porter?_

The lighthearted mask he wore, it was now flickering betwixt clinical affirmation and childlike apprehension. Integra stepped out of their embrace and he saw that her eyes were wet but grave.

He felt rebellious. He smiled coldly. Why should he lie? "Yes, I did. All of them. Why? Are you angry with me?"

Outside, the storm was still raging.

She was impassive. "No. I know you did it for me."

"Then why do you ask? Because if you're curious if I felt anything, I didn't." He goaded her. "Not fear. Not guilt."

"It's just..." She inhaled. "It's wrong. You shouldn't have had to. We're only..."

"Only children? Dearest Integra, you're better than that. We were never meant to last as children, especially in this world. Look how mad a one we're living in." His eyes were full of malice now, aimed not at her but at the universe. "Consider the children of fairy tales. A brother and sister, not much younger than us, find themselves abandoned in a forest by their penniless parents, find a house made of biscuits and oh, how wonderful it would be if they could just stay there! But it's never that easy, is it? The witch fattens them up, wanting to eat them, and the only way they can survive is to throw her into the burning oven."

"Get them before they get you. Yes, I know," she said. She had had both her father and Walter tell her the same, on multiple occasions.

"Do you? For if I am not mistaken, your uncle is searching for us with murderous intent. What will you do, Integra? Will you attempt to speak with him? Can't see that working out, or else you wouldn't have been up there in the first place."

They were only children and already the world had given them everything.

Integra squeezed shut her eyes. A second later they fluttered open. She met his blood red gaze.

"I have one more question."

He inclined his head to the side.

"The people you killed. Did they try to hurt you?"

She was not talking about today. And he knew it. He stood there, unblinking, instantly wiped clean of any emotion, frozen in time and space. His mouth a thin line, perfectly silent.

Yet from its depths, she thought she could hear a child's sob.

"Yes," he finally whispered.

"And you killed them all?"

"Yes."

Integra stepped closer. She brushed a lock of hair away from his face, and he blinked.

"I'm glad you did," she said. "Because I would have myself, for hurting you."

She took his hand. "Let's wake from this nightmare, Alucard."

xx

xx

Evidently, Richard had been full of confidence that he could dispose of a young girl with a minimum number of people. The hallways were deserted. They had, therefore, managed to get quite far until they encountered one of his men. The man was armed, but Alucard was faster. The prince kept to the shadows, so that when he struck, the man saw two things. One, twin circles hurtling out from the darkness, as red as the pits of hell he would fall into. Two, hands as white as snow, encircling his neck.

He did not even have the chance to use his gun.

"The bright side of our circumstance," Alucard said, tossing Integra the man's pistol, "is that they think they are dealing with children, and that makes them careless. Your uncle is not very smart. He should know that the deadliest of predators are the ones that are small and make little noise."

"He's not my uncle anymore. He's a traitor." Integra strangled the gun's grip. "I'll have his name stripped from the family tree for this."

Alucard chuckled.

It was still surreal to her, that Alucard was here with her in her home. His starkly contrasting colors seemed out of place in the austere house. He had recovered quickly from their talk and led the way ("I thought you said you were lost," she had pointed out sarcastically, and he had laughed). She had been uncertain of her location whilst in the vents, though now, as they neared a portrait of her ancestor, she recognized the main corridor of the second floor.

"Who is this?" Alucard asked, stopping in front of the portrait.

"My forefather, Abraham Van Helsing." She stopped as well. It had always struck her as an odd picture. The painter had portrayed the front of his hair curved upward, resembling horns. "He crossed the channel centuries ago and we, his descendants, have defended this land ever since."

"He looks demonic," her companion said without preamble. "How ironic it must be for you."

Integra rolled her eyes and tugged him forward. "I really don't think this is the time to criticize my ancestor's taste in coiffure."

"Doesn't your family hunt beasties that have hair like that? I would be quite concerned if I were you."

"No, I won't, because no, we don't; we haven't had to hunt in this land for more than a decade and  _no,_ they do not have hair like that," Integra said through gritted teeth. "You can be so insufferable sometimes."

She did not hear him murmur, "More than a decade?"

Alucard trailed his gaze over the walls where more portraits were starting to appear. "Well, I'm certainly glad you haven't inherited their hair." He was being absolutely honest about it, too. Integra had the most beautiful hair and even now, as dusty as it was from the vents, it shimmered.

They came out to the top of the main staircase where they overlooked the entrance and the tall windows on its either side that showed the storm to be dissipating. The tranquility lasted an instant. Alucard's eyes flashed. He pushed Integra to the floor just as bullets riddled the wall behind them.

"You nightmarish creature!" Richard bellowed. He fired again, but his aim was affected by the panic he had felt at the discovery of four dead men. "What have you done?"

"Nothing they didn't have coming," Alucard simpered. Under him, Integra stretched an arm over his shoulder and fired her pistol at the remaining crony who was climbing up the stairs. She hit him in the leg and the man tumbled down with a shriek, breaking his neck.

Taking the opportunity, Alucard leapt up and streaked down the staircase. The shadows danced with him. Hell lent him its flames, and its judgment pinned Richard Hellsing to his place. Hell would sing for its second son.

"You should have brought more numbers, old man. Your underestimation will be your downfall," he mocked.

Richard frothed. "You—the boy—the prince! The Queen, she was right! You're not normal. What are you? A monster—a demon—the son of the Devil!  _Dracula!"_

"That is what they call me, yes." He smiled. "But your niece has named me Alucard. Not that it matters, since you are to die soon."

The desperate man fired. Again and again. And, as it was with all things desperate, he missed again and again. Alucard dodged the bullets, reaching the suit of armor guarding the right hallway—which held a rusty sword between its gauntlets.

He seized the sword and swung. It severed the arm holding the gun.

Richard screamed.

"Such is fate," Alucard drawled. Then he dropped the sword. It  _stung._  He upturned his palms and saw that they had reddened.

_Silver._

"Alucard!" his knight, his lady, his princess and his queen called behind him. He closed his palms. No point in having her worry about him.

"Alucard, are you alright?" She was before him. She cupped his face. He was bloody and yet she still touched him. He sunk into her hands.

For her, he would do this over and over and over again.

_Over and over and over again._

He stepped back and bowed. "Do us the honors, Sir Hellsing."

He could hear her heart skip a beat at the title.

"Sir Hellsing?" Richard thrashed in a pool of his blood. " _I_   _am Sir Hellsing!"_

Integra did not say a word. She placed the tip of the gun on Richard's brow. And pulled the trigger.

_The witch is dead! Long live the queen!_

His laughter started quietly. Then it rang throughout the hall, childlike, and he took the pistol from her and threw it down and took her hands in his healed ones and they spun on the pool of blood.

"Happy birthday."

xx

xx

xx

xx

* * *

 

NOTES

I poured extra love into this chapter! Can you tell?

This time I listened, on loop, to the soundtrack of  _PMMM the Movie: Rebellion_ and well, if you're familiar with it, I'm sure you know where I'm coming from.

I believe there will be one more chapter with Young!Integra/Alucard and then smexy adult time! Or...not so smexy. Because this is rated T and I intend to keep it that way. Probably.


	8. VII

xx

**7**

xx

Alucard found her in the dining room, a solitary figure dwarfed in a high back chair. They had separated to wash themselves of the grime. She was out of her black dress and wearing a white nightgown that made him pause for a moment. It was fitting, he mused. There was no one to mourn now, certainly not the traitors that sullied the house with their remains.

He himself had no clothes in his size to change into, and had to make do with wrapping himself up in a sheet from a spare bedroom while his cloak dried. Under it, his shirt was splotched with dried blood.

She looked so very pretty, yet so very tired under the steadily darkening sky beyond the many windowpanes, her glasses hanging low on her freshly scrubbed nose. He decided he did not like that look on her. He pulled a chair across from her and noticed the plates of porridge on the table.

"I'm sorry it's cold," Integra said.

He picked up a spoon and stirred. "You shouldn't have."

"And I'm sorry I don't have anything for you to change into."

"You don't have to keep apologizing."

"Technically, I'm your host. So I beg to differ."

He could have laughed but he did not. Host of a deserted manor with six dead people, indeed.

"You should get some sleep."

She shook her head. "I'm going to wait for Walter. He'll have to be informed of what took place. The storm is over and he'll be back tonight."

"Why would you spare him your thoughts?" he asked bitterly.

"Because none of this has been his fault and I was the one who sent him off." She stared into her porridge, and her next words were spoken more quietly. "They were all gone. We never had that many servants to begin with but I know there was a maid that made porridge. They must have been ordered to leave by Richard while I was in mourning." She sighed. "I never noticed. Maybe—maybe he was—"

"I swear, if you're going to say your weasel of an uncle was right, I will choke myself to death on this porridge."

She looked at him, shocked, and then burst out laughing. "You're terrible."

_Now, that's better._

"I wasn't going to say  _he_  was right. Just that it is an indisputable fact that I am young and inexperienced." She closed her eyes.

"Yes, but what does any of that matter when you are the one victorious?" He leaned over the table. "The earth only needs to travel once for you to age. Experience, that paltry thing, can be gained. Rejoice, Integra! You are not the one lying on the floor with half an arm and a bullet hole."

Integra did not flinch at his blatant description. After all that she had seen and done it would have been redundant. "None of that matters either," she said. "Age. Experience. The only thing that matters in the end is loyalty."

Alucard stood and went over to her. "You have mine."

Her blue diamond eyes opened and sought his, turning into blue fires with the warmth surfacing in them. She would have said thank you, but it seemed too light a word to contain the wave of emotions she felt at his statement. Instead she said, "That should be the other way around. Because I'm to be your knight."

"And I'll be yours, just not in name."

He slid into the seat next to her. When she rested her head on his shoulder, he managed not to jolt. He glanced down, his cheek brushing against her slightly damp and sweet-smelling hair. She seemed perfectly at ease there, and he marveled at her.

"You always know what to say, Alucard. Sometimes I forget that you're actually older than I am."

Older than her, and old enough to have developed a foreign, curiously clinging, ravenous feeling whenever he was near her. He was aware of the strange chemistry that arose between a man and a woman, for how could he not, with the addled king trying to push him into a betrothal? Yet he doubted if all those supposedly great romances had started quite in this fashion, in the way a world was rebuilt, a name was carved into a heart. He wondered what kind of picture they would make when they were older, and he suspected it would be a masterpiece that his young mind could not adequately conjure as of now.

He felt the weight on his shoulder increase and knew she was falling asleep, despite her reticence.

"You saved me," she mumbled.

A bit belated, was it not? He smiled wryly. "You're welcome."

"No, I mean before. Your rose..."

His rose? His rose what?

But she was a step in Morpheus' realm.

"Alucard," she said, in the precipice of dreamland, "will you stay with me?"

She fell asleep. He waited for her breathing to even out.

In the quietude he said softly, "Forever, if you'd let me."

He adjusted his sheet so that it would cover Integra without disclosing his bloodstained shirt. The result was quite cozy.

What a spartan house this was. The windows were curtainless, and the moon shone unadulterated on the table, on the two abandoned plates of cold porridge and the two children. Alucard was as still as can be, determined to let Integra find refuge in her phantasmagoria. He could not help himself, however. Underneath the sheet his fingers sneaked out and curled over hers.

They could stay here forever, he thought. In this too-large abode, their gingerbread house with its dead witch and five crumbled gingerbread men.  _But this is not that kind of fairy tale, is it?_ Day would break and he would wilt under its glare. He would have to go back to the castle to avoid rousing the interest of the Queen. He would have to leave his  _real_  queen behind, this girl whom he had killed for and would do so again without a hint of regret.

He felt the pull of sleep as well and let it shutter his red, red eyes, let it slump his head next to hers, and nothing was left in his mind for a while except for their soft breathing, their linked hands and their entwined black and gold hair.

_Good night_

_Sleep tight_

_Don't let the bedbugs bite._

_And if they do,_

_Take your shoe_

_And hit them_

_Till they're black and blue._

Usually, he did not dream.

Usually.

But there are exceptions, and tonight appeared to be one. Alucard dreamt of a faceless man, impossibly tall, clad entirely in red, towering over the castle, towering over the country. It seemed he would consume the world by his sheer presence.

_the bird of hermes is my name_

A smaller figure appeared, also faceless, and the man stopped his expansion.

_eating my wings_

The mass of red collapsed into itself, and shrunk, and shrunk, until it was kneeling before the second figure.

_to make me tame_

_"...back, Count."_

_"...returned, Countess."_

Their voices were garbled and the image became fractured. It shattered into a nayuta of pieces, raining down on him. Alucard walked through the debris and the shards morphed into red orbs.

 _Wake, young prince!_  they called, neither eyes nor mouths.  _Wake, young prince!_

Then echoed a deep male voice, mocking.  _You're not going to let him take her away, are you?_

He had his free hand on a spoon even before waking up. He hurled it into the dining room entrance at the same time his eyes snapped open.

The spoon was cut into three pieces midair.

Oh, so  _that_  was his trick. Handy.

"Take a step further and I'll cut your feet where you stand."

"That should be my words," said the man. "What has happened here?"

Alucard snorted, though lightly so as not to disturb Integra. "The bodies you saw on your way weren't enough of a hint for you? The unworthy son of this house has betrayed its new matriarch. And now she is uncontested. As for  _you_ ," he hissed, "are you on the side of the living or on the side of the dead?"

The man radiated anger from every line on his face. "I would die before I betray Integra!"

"So says the man who arrived after the party."

"I've been looking after her ever since birth. She's more precious to me than my life."

They were speaking in very soft voices, miraculously. Neither wanted to wake Integra.

Alucard studied him. A revelation, one that he had entertained yet never had the chance to press, struck him. "That day in the garden. It was your doing, wasn't it?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"Thomas Seymour. Second son of the Duke of Somerton. You made him interfere with us. Too bad he had terrible aim and hit her instead, right?"

"I'm afraid you're losing me,  _Your Highness_."

Alucard snarled. "Don't play coy. Why did you do it? Wanted to see how I would react? Wanted to expose me to her? The monster prince?" It took tremendous effort to tamp down his volume. "I told you Integra was important to me and I meant it. I will hunt down and kill  _every single person_ that abandoned her on this day if it will secure her.  _Including you._ If that makes me a monster, so be it."

They were in a stalemate, five decades' worth of distance between them.

At last, the butler retracted his wires. "We share a common objective, then."

Walter regarded the prince critically. Such a young man, slight of stature, yet so full of darkness. God knows how often Walter had tried to desist Integra from visiting the castle, and God knows how often Integra had tried to convince him that "Alucard" was not all that bad. He had thought the prince had her hoodwinked, even as he knew his lady was above such tactics. He had seriously considered sending her off to boarding school.

Now, though, in the wake of today's bloodshed, he was reconsidering.

"Was it you or Miss Hellsing that finished off Richard?"

Alucard made an expression of disgust. "Don't misjudge me so. That deed was Integra's and Integra's only."

"Quite," Walter agreed.

The vanquisher in question stirred and the two shut up. It was with mixed feelings that Walter watched his ward snore lightly and bury her face into the prince's shoulder.

What constituted a monster? Was it the willingness to kill? The lack of control? The otherworldliness? By all means, this boy, with his flaming eyes and his skittering shadows, was  _not of this world_. Yet that aspect was belied by the mundanity of the picture in front of him. The boy had come for Integra. He had deferred Richard's execution to her as acknowledgement of her rightful quarry.

_"I trust him, Walter."_

All beings had masters—whether spiritual, physical or ideological. Perhaps this monster had found his.

It was a disturbing notion.

He would, for this night, show respect to the young man who had aided Integra in her time of need. He bowed. "Forgive me my rudeness. You have my utmost gratitude for taking care of her. Also, I do apologize for my indiscretion."

Mollified, the flames reduced to embers. Alucard curled his lips. "You must have been truly desperate."

"Enough to use a faulty puppet, yes," Walter said, suppressing a sigh at the thought of the Seymour runt.

The two exchanged sardonic smiles.

Walter straightened. "This has been a most enlightening conversation, Your Highness, but I believe it would be prudent to cut it short. No doubt you need to return to the castle, and my lady needs to be taken to her room. She needs proper rest."

Alucard's fingers instinctively tightened over Integra's.

Walter waited.

Alucard stared at him for seconds longer, before conceding to his logic. He gently started to remove her head from his shoulder.

Integra grabbed his sheet. "Don't leave..." she mumbled in her sleep.

He froze, surprised, and relaxed back into his chair. He then flashed a triumphant smile at the butler.

A vein popped on Walter's head.  _Why that little..._

"It seems," the boy said gleefully, "that she does not want to part with me."

Not for the first time that year Walter damned their decision to return home.

xx

xx

A teacup hit the wall and shattered.

The Queen grabbed a teapot and threw that, too. Then she got her hands on a mirror, but it said, "Not a good idea."

She clutched the mirror with the ivory frame between her powdered, bejeweled hands and wailed. "You said that Richard Hellsing will be able to help us! If he had taken over Hellsing and had its assets at his disposal—he could have gotten rid of the prince! But no!  _That girl!_  With her silly devotion to  _that monster!_ She is to be knighted Sir Hellsing now!"

"She, devoted to him? Certainly—yet more so the other way around, is it not?"

"That brat doesn't care about anything outside himself," the Queen screeched. "He's disavowed his father, his country, the church and God Himself! A mere girl should not be anything to him!"

The mirror made a thoughtful noise.

"Calm yourself, meine Königin. It  _is_  unusual that Richard Hellsing died so suddenly, after assuring you of his ascendancy. What was his cause?"

"The mouth of that butler is heavier than I thought," the Queen said disgustedly. "He keeps going on about a heart attack. Bah! I may not have any proof, but I know that the little demon had something to do with it."

That morning, when Richard Hellsing was announced dead, she was on her way to the stairs, bypassing a group of men and women gossiping about how unfortunate it was for the Hellsing girl, two family deaths in the same month! (And was it not strange that the funeral was concluded so hurriedly?) She had almost had a heart attack herself at the sight of the prince leaning on the balustrade, watching the group with a chilling smile. He had caught her gaze and said, voice dripping with sarcasm, "Yes, most unfortunate."

"Something has shifted since that afternoon several months ago," said the mirror. "The name—'Alucard.' A simple turn of the word, it seems, but obviously quite powerful. If an unharnessed beast is dangerous enough, what does that say about a beast that has harnessed itself?"

"What on earth are you jabbering about?" the Queen snapped.

The mirror was not omnipotent. The mirror was not flawless. And, most importantly, the mirror was not benign. It was an old mirror, a portly mirror, with small scratches on its surface, powered by forces the Queen knew not. To make the best use of it one needed to ask it a question, and phrase it precisely.

Even then, one had no way of knowing if the answer was what one sought.

The mirror had outlived all its masters. It would do so again.

"I never said that  _Richard_  Hellsing would be able to help us."

"The girl, then? Fat chance that will happen, with the bundle of righteousness she is!"

If it could, the mirror would have steepled its digits. "How about this, meine Königin? Simply lay low awhile. Let the young Schneewittchen be. Let him grow up to be a beautiful man, with his beautiful Fräulein by his side, and take him down when he has everything in his grasp."

"More years of this madness?" the Queen wobbled.

"Think of it as a long-term investment," the mirror consoled.

"Long-term investment..." the Queen stumbled away from the mirror. Her mind whirled as her demeanor calmed. "Long-term investment. Yes...perhaps you are right. After all, every one of my immediate plans has been thwarted. Yes. If I cannot find the means to destroy him here, right now, in this kingdom in this very hour, I will simply have to bide my time...and look elsewhere."

"Might I suggest starting with establishing a diplomatic tie?" said the mirror. "The Catholic territories beyond the channel are said to have formidable priests."

xx

xx

It had been bad enough that her father had died close to her birthday, made only worse by Richard's coup five days prior. Now, she wondered if she was going to have to witness Alucard and Walter kill each other at her own party.

"Integra told me she wanted lemon meringue. I made the cook prepare it  _especially_ for her."

"And I have been preparing her meals  _myself_  for years. I  _know_  she favors apple tart."

"I like both, actually," she said, but they were not listening.

A table was set in the middle of Alucard's rose garden, laden with dishes. Under the thinly-veiled threat of painful consequences the royal cook had outdone himself. There was a lemon meringue pie fluffier than the clouds of heaven and sunnier than egg yolk. Next to it, baked under far more hospitable circumstances, was Walter's contribution, an apple tart with gorgeously arranged slices.

They were arguing about which one she preferred.  _Really._

"Lemon meringue."

"Apple tart."

She took a bite from the meringue and the tart each. Both were delicious. "Alucard, thank you for the meringue. It's perfect."

Alucard beamed.

"Walter, your skills are superb as usual. It's wonderful."

Walter bowed. "I am ever at your service, my lady."

Integra dabbed at her lips with a napkin and tried not to roll her eyes. Honestly, one was a prince and the other a sixty-year-old man, but they could be  _such_ children.

Alucard went around her, twirling his black parasol, for it was a quintessential autumn day. "Are you enjoying your birthday, Integra? Is it to your satisfaction?"

The roses surrounding them were at their largest, determined to flaunt their beauty before the inevitable winter. Their redolence in the cool autumn air lifted her spirits up higher than they had ever been in the month of October. She looked at Walter, then turned to look at Alucard. This was her family now, this little circle of three.

She smiled genuinely. "I appreciate that you did this for me."

The sun would not tire him this hour, when he was basking in Integra's glory. Alucard retrieved something from behind her. "Close your eyes."

She did.

He raised it above her head, his breath tickling her nape. "Now, for the final touch."

He perched a crown of roses on her hair.

That was not what surprised her, though.

What did was the kiss he bestowed on her cheek.

Integra slapped a hand to the mark and swiveled around to see him grinning. She blushed furiously. "Alucard!"

"Do you like your present, my Integra?"

She was so flustered that she missed the possessive adjective. "Some present!"

"There is more where that came from," he teased. "You shouldn't be so greedy."

She passionately wished she was not resembling a tomato. " _Alucard!_ "

"Of course I have a proper gift for you, but that can wait until later. You think so lowly of me."

"You make it bloody easy," she grumbled. She touched the crown of roses, secretly pleased. "What's this, then?"

"My tribute to you."

"Tribute?"

"Is it not customary for one to give tribute to the person who holds one's heart in their hands?"

She frowned. "You speak in riddles."

Alucard hid a snicker. In a much more serious tone, with a peculiar gleam to his sunset gaze he said, "You belong here, now."

Walter, tactfully turning a blind eye to the pair, poured Earl Grey into their awaiting cups. "Your tea is served, my lady; Your Highness."

"Thank you, Walter."

The prince recalled a conversation he had with the butler the night he was leaving the manor. The man had informed him that the bodies had been taken care of.  _"We'll have to give Richard a funeral, to avoid talk, but it'll be a brief one and he will never make it to the family resting ground."_

_"Good."_

_"Just one more thing, Your Highness. I want you aware of this, if you are planning to...pursue a future with my lady."_

_He smirked. "Let's hear it."_

_"My lady will have told you of our family business. The Hellsings have for years defended this land from the beasts that reside in its very depths. Imps, hellhounds, gargoyles, wraiths—we are their greatest enemy._

_"However. Thirteen years ago—"_

_Here the prince gave a start._

_"—there was a purge of these creatures. My former master, Arthur Hellsing, and I never found out the cause of it, and the issue had been on the back burner. Until," the butler stressed, "I realized that the period coincided with—"_

_"With my birth," Alucard said, almost inaudibly._

Integra picked up the cup. The roses complemented her dark skin and made the blue of her irises stand out even through her misted glasses.

_"You think me the cause. The proverbial sum, the counterweight, the zenith of monstrosity. Well, well. No wonder you were desperate."_

_"I have neither proof nor compelling argument, Your Highness. It is merely—how shall I put it—food for thought. I rest my case."_

_He barely resisted dissolving into hysterical laughter. "If I ever feel like going on a killing spree, I'll let you know."_

_"Yes, please do," said the butler. "For, in the event that happens, it will be none other than Integra who shall drive a stake in your heart."_

Alucard raised his teacup to a confused Integra. "I await the day."

She did roll her eyes this time. "Whatever you say, Alucard."

Walter said nothing.

The prince sat on her right, the butler stood at her left, and the crowned Faerie Queene sipped her tea of bergamot. She had a feeling that this was merely the first of many strange birthdays to come.

xx

xx

xx

xx

* * *

 

NOTES

It's just not  _Hellsing_ unless the fluff is served with a side of blood and death threats.

Don't worry. Walter will not betray anyone.

That prompts me, however, to talk about my take on the whole Walter fiasco in canon. The thing is, I was planning on writing a one-shot about it, and that particular plot bunny may have bled a lot onto this chapter. In OVA 9 we see Walter getting enraged at Alucard's friendly reminder that Integra now only belongs to him and vice versa. Now, what I'm about to say should not be taken as Walter x Integra. That is so wrong on so many levels that I cannot even.  _But._ Walter would have thought for a long time that he was the only one for Integra and Integra was only his (again, NOT in the romantic sense). Then comes Alucard, ever young and ever capable, overshadowing Walter's presence in his beloved lady's life. Alucard even alludes to this. ("Were you afraid of becoming useless? . . . Or maybe you were afraid of being forgotten?")

After all, we don't know if Sir Islands' exposition of Walter's betrayal is the actual one-hundred-percent truth.


	9. VIII

_With skin white as sorcery, hair black as obsidian, and_ **[eyes]** _red as the flame,_

_I have been reborn._

_If your burning envy has made you sin, then with burning shoes—_

_You shall dance until you die!_

\- Sound Horizon, "Garasu no Hitsugi de Nemuru Himegimi"

xx

**8**

xx

The earth only needs to travel once for one to age.

It traveled eight times.

The beautiful boy became a beautiful man. A terrible beauty, as he always had been, but now with a perfect equal and perfect opposite at his side. The girl who became a knight became a woman who possessed great strength. With his heart in her hands the sanguinary man learned to hide his hunger behind a sanguine mask.

Do not be fooled by that smile, that smile full of teeth.

It will swallow you whole before you blink.

xx

xx

Gowns swept the floor with color, jewels dazzled beneath the chandelier.

The ladies and gentlemen of the court were bedecked in their finest for the ball held in celebration of the ending of winter and the beginning of spring. Or at least, that was what was publicly proclaimed. It was still February. Everyone was much too polite to point out that the king had finally gone around the bend and his wife just liked to throw parties. According to the rumors there  _was_ a guest of honor, but no one knew who they were, why they were here or why they had chosen this time of the year to visit.

It was all very peculiar.

Not that anyone was complaining. The night was ripe yet its darkness, the bone-cracking February air and its sobriety were banished from the hall by the fervor of the festivities.

But in their midst stood one very tall figure clad entirely in black, save for a worn red cravat at his neck.

Alucard swiveled a glass of wine in his large, white hands, a meaningless smile on his face as his eyes, in the same shade of the wine and obscured by his midnight hair, swept lazily over those around him. He knew the ball was a farce. No doubt there was an ulterior motive, what it was though he did not care. Any plan concocted by the Queen was bound to be half-assed. No, he had better things to care about, such as when  _she_ would appear.

He wished she would hurry. It was an effort standing here surrounded by these insipid beings. He could see the women casting pitifully surreptitious, lustful glances at him. His smile deepened into one of derision.  _Ah, the irony._

These women, who in their younger years had spared nary a glance at him when he was a frail little boy with unholy eyes, now thought him attractive. Mysterious. Rakish. A face and a body like that, they could skim over minor details such as eyes, they thought. The fallen angel, the beast, the Lord of Misrule waiting to be tamed. And they could tame him, they thought.

What. Utter. Nonsense.

Only one woman could tame him, and she had kept him on a firm leash ever since he had met her. And she was now coming his way, looking grouchier and lovelier than usual.

"This is ridiculous," she gritted out as a greeting.

He licked his lips. "Hello to you, too. You look stunning."

"I look ridiculous. This is what's fashionable these days? Really? Because I think they're trying to strangle themselves."

"How merciful they are then, to grant us such a lovely sight before their deaths." He stared at her bosoms.

Integra slid a gloved finger up the bridge of his nose. "Eyes up here."

He stretched his neck and nipped at the finger.

This was their normal routine, for they knew exactly how they felt about each other without superfluous words. When she jabbed at his forehead at his antics, he barked out a laugh and gave attention to the rest of her figure. It was a treat; so rare it was to see her out of the menswear she favored as a knight and in a dress, which she wore only on the most special of occasions. It was the one thing he missed about their childhood, honestly. Her hair was even up, baring the slope of her neck.

_Magnificent._

As magnificent as she was, the crimson velvet dress with its corseted bodice  _did_ seem a tad uncomfortable. "Are you sure you can breathe in that thing?"

"No," she deadpanned.

He sneaked a hand around her waist. "Do you want me to help you out of it?"

"Don't even start."

"I only have your best interests at heart," he protested, to which she let out a snort. But she did not remove his hand, instead taking his other and setting the wine down, adjusting them into position as the music commenced anew.

Alucard gave her a crooked smile. "Are we dancing?"

The blue eyes that peered up at him from behind her glasses would have appeared cold to anyone else, yet to him they held a hint of daring and a dash of mischief. "I'll lead."

She did, to the scandalized expressions of the lords and ladies around them. Predictably, they had begun whispering when she arrived, reaching the peak of gossip when they started to move. All this despite the fact that they were nothing new on the plate, had long since been old, old news. The infamous duo, the monster prince and the lady knight.

On their own, they were intimidating enough.

Together, they were downright frightening.

At first, when they had been a novelty, people had made the mistake of going after Integra. It was easier, they thought, to make disparaging remarks about an orphan girl who bore a man's title—who was obviously not quite right in the mind if she  _chose_  to spend her time with the prince—than about the prince himself. It was easier, they thought, because nothing seemed to faze her. She took the comments in stride with a cool, detached demeanor, and then when she was older, with a drag of a cigar, as if she was waiting.

Waiting for the eventual demise of the speaker.

 _Things_  happened.

To those who questioned her title.

(The man had his leg speared by a boar while out riding.)

To those who questioned her virtue.

(The woman had her hair caught in a candle during a prayer.)

Several people claimed that they had witnessed her chastising the prince. "Alucard, you really didn't have to do that."

To which the prince was said to have replied, "Oh, but I did."

It gradually became apparent that this girl, whose platinum locks came to be as long as she had been once tall, whose eyes were sharper than the tip of an iceberg, was not someone to be trifled with. Now, with twenty years' worth of sharpness, people were apt to say that Sir Integral Hellsing was more imposing than the prince, who in contrast grew seemingly approachable as he aged, with his laid-back stance and ever-present smile.

_Do not be fooled by that smile, that smile full of teeth._

_It will swallow you whole before you blink._

The dance was probably supposed to be some sort of waltz, but the prince and the knight were cursory, almost lackadaisical in their steps. Neither cared much for dancing and neither had plans to excel at it; they were dancing simply because they were with each other. They moved between the other pairs in a whirl of black and red, and when it was the moment for the lady to spin Alucard did, slowly and indulgently, his coat brushing against her skirt. He could not expect Integra to lift him up, however, so he obliged, sending her skirt fluttering in the air like the petals of a rose.

She landed gracefully and his sole regret was that he could not send her beautiful hair flying as well. "They're staring at us," she said.

They clasped hands and turned. Alucard shrugged. "When do they not?"

"It gets old after a while."

"Those men are staring at you. May I pluck their eyes out?"

"Not any likelier than me pulling the teeth out of those women over there."

"Now that is a sight I would love to see."

" _Not_  likely," she stressed.

They stepped closer. "So," Integra said, "have an idea what all this pomp and fanfare is about?"

She dipped him, and his manic eyes briefly caught sight of the dais where the Queen was failing to make it not obvious that she was watching them.  _Pathetic._

"A few," he said when he came back up. He pressed his cold forehead to hers, which was most certainly not a part of the dance and had those around them erupt into a fresh fit of gossip. Integra exhaled a long-suffering sigh but her lips were curved upwards.

They gave up the pretense of dancing, merely swaying. "I could tell you that the delegates from the Catholic territories are mingling near the banquet table. Not members of the clergy, not with that amount of extravagance, but who knows? One of them may be spiking the punch with holy water as we speak." Integra scoffed and their noses touched. Alucard saw his blood red gaze reflected in her aqua orbs. "Perhaps an elaborate attempt to poison me in front of hundreds of guests?"

He said it in jest and she knew it, yet though her smile lingered, her nails were digging into his shoulder. "They can try," she replied in a deceptively light tone.

"Yes," he said, just as lightly. They parted, stretching their limbs and circling each other, their miens etched with promise.

_They are a pair of sharks circling a common target._

_Don't blink! They will swallow you whole._

"Yet I wouldn't waste my precious breath talking about these things when you, my Integra, are in my arms—"

He tugged and she spun into his arms. She growled. He had taken the lead.

"—wickedly breathtaking in that dress. Oh, the sins I could commit right this second."

"Silver-tongued lecher," she taunted. "So easy to sway. Why don't I wear a dress every day if it bothers you this much?"

"Why indeed," he sighed.

"It's because I know I won't get any rest from you if I do, you git." Integra elbowed him in the gut and he grunted. "You can, therefore, blame yourself for that."

He was about to defend his honor, when his teeth gnashed together at something over her shoulder. She turned them around so she could see what it was.

Bugger.

"May I cut in?"

It was Thomas fucking Seymour.

Integra held a firm grip on Alucard as she raised a brow at the man, who was as bulky and oafish as ever. She was not sure whether she should be impressed by his lack of self-preservation. He had largely avoided direct contact with them since their skirmish in the garden eight years ago, but had often been overheard to sneer at her and Alucard. She had kept mum about it. She did not need people dying on her just because they were stupid, thank you very much.

Besides, it was not as if she did not have her own means of revenge.

"Good evening, Your Highness," Thomas said, bowing. "You're keeping us away from the most enchanting lady in the hall. Might I have a dance or two?"

"Hello, little puppet. No, you may not," Alucard said, steering Integra away to the margins of the dance floor.

"I must insist!" Thomas followed them. "You haven't even allowed me to address her yet. And whatever do you mean by 'puppet'? Good evening, Dame Hellsing—"

" _Sir_  Hellsing," Integra corrected, intervening before Alucard impaled him with a fork. "Lord Thomas Seymour. Long time no see. Recovered from that bowel problem?"

The man was instantly discomfited. "Quite. Thank you for asking—"

"Huh. How about that leg? I heard it's become chronic?"

"No thanks to you," Thomas bit out, his charade slipping.

"You flatter me, Lord Thomas. I had no idea my kick was that fatal." Integra pried Alucard's hands away, ignoring his rumble of unhappiness. "A dance, you say? It would be rude of me to refuse. Shall we?"

"Integra," Alucard hissed.

"It was a pleasure dancing with you, Your Highness. I'll catch you later." She gave the prince a half-curtsy, half-bow and as she did, she shot him a meaningful look.

Alucard caught it and understood, reluctantly. Another thing he missed about their childhood. They could not just simply punch or kick or maim anyone anymore, not with eyes everywhere. Now it was all about "subtlety" and "tact" and "conservation of body parts." How dull.

He subjected Thomas Seymour to his gaze until the man squirmed, then bowed to Integra. "It was my  _pleasure,_  Sir Hellsing," Alucard purred, his tongue hitting every nuance. And before he left, he leaned down and whispered in her ear, "You really should have let me kill him."

"What do you want?" Integra demanded as soon as Alucard was gone. "And  _don't_  say dance, I know your leg is useless."

"Dame Hellsing," Thomas started.

She calculated the angle and pressure required to break his foot. " _Sir_  Hellsing."

"Yes, of course. Finally you are without your counterpart. And in a gown, no less! Two rare sights in one night, I was—"

"Get to the point," Integra snapped. "Does the Queen have a message for me?"

Thomas was a member of the Queen's inner circle. A fitting place, full of backstabbers and cowards.

"Fine," he sulked. "No, no message. I come of my own free will, actually, bearing a reminder. You might have noticed the king is not himself.  _Something_  might happen soon."

"It is no secret that His Majesty is ill. So what?" She smiled coldly. "Shouldn't you be fleeing the borders for fear of the inevitable?"

Thomas smiled back depreciatingly. "What makes you so sure that  _he_  will be king?"

She needed a cigar.

"Are you suggesting something? Why, Lord Thomas. I knew you were a backstabbing cowardly nitwit but not to the extent you would divulge your own plot."

"Acerbic as ever,  _Sir_  Hellsing," he retorted. "I'm not suggesting anything. But mark my words. Nothing has changed since that day. No one in their right mind will take his crown seriously."

"Alucard will be king," she said simply.

And that was that.

"Why are you telling me this?"

"You warned me off all those years ago," said Thomas. "I'm returning the favor. Call it even."

Integra smirked. It seemed that she had underestimated Thomas Seymour. "Very well."

"And when you find yourself in need of superior company, I will be happy to— _ARGH!"_

"Oh dear," Integra intoned. "How clumsy of me. You never know what you're stepping on in these dresses. And so soon after the boar incident. Dreadfully sorry."

"You bi—"

"Thank you for the conversation, Lord Thomas. May we never meet again."

She left him on the floor and stalked toward the entrance, where Alucard was leaning on a column with his glass of wine. She grabbed the glass and gulped it down.

He looked at her amusedly. "He lasted longer than I expected. What did you break?"

"His toe."

"Only his toe?"

"Take it up another time, Alucard. I need air." And a box of cigars.

xx

xx

They went outside in the biting cold, side-by-side in silence. It was fortunate that the last snow had been a few weeks ago. It would have been a nuisance in this dress. Alucard kept a hand on the small of her back as they walked through the front gardens, past the fountains and into a secluded space with a bench.

She plopped down. He remained standing, waiting, mindful of her mood and merely fixing upon her with his sunrise eyes. She produced a cigar and held it up. "Light."

He smirked and struck a match. He always carried a few for this express purpose. He had not agreed with her habit at first, but had eventually grown partial to how it added an earthy layer to her scent of tea and roses.

The flame illuminated her disgruntled face and he could not stay quiet any longer. "What did he say, my Integra?" It had been a while since he got to kill someone and for it to be the little puppet would be most enjoyable.

"The Queen is planning something."

He laughed. "That's it? That's what got you worked up?"

"It's different this time and you know it." She gnawed at the end of her cigar. "It will be of no surprise if the king suddenly dies tomorrow. Then what?"

"Then what, indeed."

Integra looked impatiently at him. "Thomas Seymour all but insinuated that there is going to be a resistance. They are not going to let you claim the throne so easily."

"Let them resist all they want. I will destroy them.  _We_  will destroy them together, as we have all our enemies." His voice grew soft. He placed his icy hands on her shoulders and leaned in.

"We will dance on their blood, and I will make you queen."

"Alucard," she warned. They had had this conversation before.

"Why do you resist me, my Integra?" he whispered. "We could have married a long time ago. You would have been my princess and I would have showered you with everything this kingdom, this world had to offer. We would have annihilated anything that stood in our path. I would have had every one of those who insulted you dance in burning shoes. Everything you desire, anything you ask, at your feet where they belong."

She stared up at him. He was the fruit of winter and the sentry of hell, the mixture of the colors of blood and bone and tar masquerading as a beautiful picture. And she looked through it all and absorbed it all and never shied away.

"And I have told you, I have no desire to be queen."

"You have no desire to be with me," he said, with overflowing bitterness.

Integra batted his hands away from her and removed her cigar, stubbing it out. "You can be such a child, Alucard."

He snarled at the perceived confirmation of his statement but was distracted when she extracted the pins holding up her hair. The blonde tresses tumbled down, luminous. He was transfixed.

She smiled at his reaction. "I would have been no help to you as a princess, Alucard. You need a knight to help you take the throne. I'll be your knight, your champion, and then when everything is settled, well. Maybe then I could..."

"You could..."

"I  _could_  entertain the possibility of accepting your proposal—"

He kissed her. It was an urgent and consuming and carnal kiss. She seized the back of his sable curls, just as demanding if not more. They nipped and sucked and devoured and the way he tangled his hands into her hair should have been painful but it was not.

She broke away first. "I still can't breathe in this thing."

He leered. "Are you taking up on my offer?"

"Don't push your luck. Just loosen the stays a bit."

His fingers were already trailing on her back. "It would ruin the velvet."

"I don't care. It's not like I'm going to wear it again."

He smiled with all his teeth. "As you wish."

Alucard sat down beside her and hummed to himself, taking sweet time to drag a finger up her spine, before yanking on the seams of the velvet, tearing them apart and revealing the corset underneath. Then he made quick work of loosening the lace. "Better now?"

"Thank God," Integra huffed. "I don't know how those women do it. Don't dare expect me to wear these things when we're married or I'll divorce you at the altar."

She blinked at the look of absolute joy that consumed his visage at her flippant words. That her mere mentioning of marriage, even in jest, could affect him so much—Integra felt both an urge to burst into laughter and to sigh in exasperation. Or perhaps, she should have known better.

There were times when Alucard's devotion to her unnerved her. He put her on such a high pedestal, higher than his father, his country, even God and even  _himself_ , and she could not understand why. Once, when she was sixteen and he was eighteen, he at the cusp of manhood and her shedding the very last vestiges of childhood, she had asked.

There had been many things he wanted to say, she could tell from his red, red eyes. But the only thing he said was, "You never left." And then he had kissed her.

It had been their first kiss. She had punched him in the stomach, and he had laughed. Then she had grabbed his face and kissed him back.

They had always been unique, as individuals and more so together.

"Anyway," she said hastily, "we need a plan."

Alucard could not care less about who concocted what, he only paid attention to her: her pale locks framing her tan cheeks, her diamond eyes holding a mix of worry and irritation and want and fluster. He could erase two of those emotions and amplify the others. He could even make her blush, though it was harder now than when they had been young to witness that delightful diffusion of color. Yet another thing he missed.

"Are you listening?"

So practical, his Integra. "Let them come. I'll butcher them all, gladly."

"You're talented, Alucard, but I doubt you can take on a whole battalion at once."

He hummed and was suddenly far too close, lips hovering over her collarbone. "You think I'm talented?" He kissed the skin.

"That's not what I meant. Focus!" she snapped. She herself, however, was having trouble focusing with his tenacious nibbles up her neck.

The night, it seemed, was to be their wake-up call. Her instincts prickled. He halted his ministrations. The shadows were too dark. The air was too still. Alucard glowered, his displeasure at being interrupted fortifying the vibrancy of his orbs. Both of their pupils dilated at the surrounding trees.

Integra reached under her skirt for her leg holster and whipped out her pistol. She was never without a weapon, not since that day. She fired into the air, hitting a flying object with deadly accuracy. Alucard had whisked into the shadows and was squeezing the throat of a frantic creature with his nails. Its vessels ruptured.

She stood over the creature she felled. It was an imp. Alucard had already chucked his prey into a tree.

"Just two days ago I had to exterminate a whole bunch of these pests." Integra withdrew another cigar and clenched it unlighted. "What's the cause? Why now?"

Alucard's face was unreadable.

She kicked the carcass out of sight and eyed him. "Are you alright?"

"Hmm." He flexed his bloodied fingers. "Seems I made a mess."

"Typical." She strode forth, took his hand and wiped the blood away. It did not matter if it stained her gloves, for they were crimson. "You always do. Whatever will you do without me?"

"I ask that myself, every day," he said quietly.

Integra gazed wordlessly at him, this man whom she knew and who knew her better than anyone else. Sometimes, he could be such a child, as if despite his age, height, charm and nonchalance, he remained at heart a little boy huddled in a chair in a cold library tucked away in a drafty castle. It was at times like this she felt like a little girl again, barging into that library, showing him the sun.  _Won't you come out?_

She poked his chest. "Glad to know I'm appreciated."

To her gratification, he chuckled.

He struck a match anew and lit her cigar, and its smoke perfumed the calm of the winter night...

...which ended quite abruptly.

There was a commotion from the hall.

"The king has collapsed!" someone shrieked.

Integra and Alucard looked at each other. An annoyingly smug smile started to unfold on his face. She tried not to bite her cigar in half.

"Bugger."

xx

xx

xx

xx

* * *

 

NOTES

The credit for the translated lyrics of Sound Horizon's "Garasu no Hitsugi de Nemuru Himegimi (The Princess Sleeping in a Glass Coffin)" goes to Anime Lyrics dot Com. Although I am not an expert in the Japanese language, I know enough and have heard the track more than enough to say that their translation is not  _completely_  accurate. But it is the most poetic, I think. The word in brackets was originally "lips," of course.

I would also like to thank Keira Knightley for her performance in  _POTC_ , which very effectively showed me how much of a pain corsets are.

I listened to Adam Lambert's "Welcome to the Show" while writing this and it was all very emotional.

 


	10. IX

xx

**9**

xx

It began to snow heavily the next day. Integra stood before the windows of her office in coat and breeches, watching the world turn white. The snow cushioned all sound and everything was as quiet as can be. But she knew from experience that quiet did not necessarily mean peaceful.

She ran a hand through her hair in agitation. They were more riotous than usual. Alucard used to tease her about it. "It looks straight, your hair, but it's not entirely. It curls at the end, like hooks. Luring your prey into a false sense of security."

"Wax rhapsodic about your own hair, Alucard," she had said.

That git. He had looked so full of himself when he saw her off while everyone around them was panicking about the king and his critical condition. "Now is not the time!" she had nearly shouted. That stupid git. When it came to him she felt years older. The king was at the end of his life and Alucard was at the end of his as a prince, it was a pivotal period and all he could think about was the likely fruition of her sort-of not-quite acceptance to his proposal.

He had _such_ a one-track mind.

If they wanted his ascension uncontested they needed the right kind of support and the right amount of force. The meeting she had with the Convention an hour ago had been for those exact needs, for gauging their reactions toward the imminent power change.

It had been a complete headache.

"We are aware of your...friendship with the prince, Sir Hellsing," one had said, "and while he does possess a certain brand of charisma, he can be...enigmatic. Who knows how he will act as king?"

Do _you?_ had been on the tip of her tongue, but she had held it. "All rulers can be capricious—that is why they have advisors."

"And you believe you can advise him?"

She shrugged. "I'm his oldest friend. I'm sure I can talk him out when the situation requires it." She took a sip of tea. "His Majesty has been remiss in guiding the prince into regnancy, as he had in most aspects of his reign."

No one refuted her. They were still collectively smarting over the budget cuts made a few months ago.

"There will naturally be thus reservations about the prince's ability to rule. However, as far as legitimacy is concerned, the prince's is indisputable. The king did name him his heir." And that was as far as his parenting went.

"Is it really," another knight muttered.

Integra looked at him. "I beg your pardon?"

The knight, Sir Bradbury, cleared his throat. "The prince. His legitimacy as His Majesty's heir. You cannot—pardon my word choice— _skirt_ around the obvious, Sir Hellsing. His eyes. They are not human."

Integra leaned into her chair. She seemed unaffected by the man's jab at her sex, her sight, and her professionalism. She steepled her fingers. "Continue."

"How can you trust him? You are, for all intents and purposes, asking us to vouch for a man who may very well not be a man at all. And it's not just his eyes. Rumors circulating about, of the amount of blood on his hands!"

"Did they say how many litres?"

"Sir Hellsing," Sir Islands said quietly.

"Don't drag us into your personal affairs with—with— _Dracula!"_ Sir Bradbury concluded, his face red.

Her blue diamond eyes were unblinking.

"You seem to enjoy rumors, Sir Bradbury, so let me tell you one," Integra suddenly said. She stared at nothing in particular as she began. "It's about our current Queen Consort…who harbors the desire to become Queen Regnant."

Silence at the table.

"Who is said to secretly practice witchery."

Sir Penwood coughed discreetly into his handkerchief.

"Who is said to have attempted to murder the prince, on multiple occasions."

"Where are you going with this?" Sir Bradbury asked.

"It's odd that all these rumors 'circulate about,' as you have said, but no one has attempted to discredit the Queen to my face as much as they have the prince. It is as if," she said carefully, "they are frightened by my proximity to him, as if should the prince gain a prominent ally in, say, an influential member of the Round Table, _something_ might happen."

Certain members of the Table, including Bradbury, were not looking at her.

"I know many things about me detract weight from my words. Yet I feel I must voice this concern." Her diamond eyes could cut through steel. "How is it that one half of the castle is perpetually exuberant...and the other half is perpetually in ruins?"

No one had an answer.

"With that in mind..." She drawled the next sentence out, slowly. "If the prince is a monster, then a fair share of that fault...lies in your hands."

"Sir Hellsing!" Sir Bradbury squawked.

"Don't come to me, the young woman with personal ties to the prince whose family has killed monsters for generations, when the arrow of blame circles around and points to your heads."

"You're threatening us!"

"Am I?" Integra tilted her head. The movement raised the end of one of her shorter locks above the table. It was curved like a hook. "I was merely stating an observation. But rest assured. If Alucard does turn on all of us—" the eleven knights reacted in varying degrees to the name, that strange name, "—I will take full responsibility. Now. The snow is piling. Let's call it a day."

Sir Bradbury sputtered. He and the other knights stood shakily and dispersed, leaving Integra sitting alone in the center chair. A couple of them approached her.

"I trust you will keep your word, Sir Hellsing," Sir Islands said, as he gave her a nod.

"I'll apologize in Bradbury's stead, Sir Hellsing," Sir Penwood said, resting a fatherly hand on Integra's shoulder. Only then did he realize that she was trembling in anger. He squeezed. "But please know we are not the enemy."

"Good day, Sirs," Integra replied, keeping her voice steady.

She had stayed in that conference room, reining in her temper, until Walter came. She had walked to her office, her eyes following the ceiling where, inside, crisscrossed the vents she had crawled in a desperate bid for survival. And then...

_"We were never meant to last as children."_

_Yes,_ she thought. She smiled witheringly. No need to dwell on the past. Their time is nigh.

Funny, though, how the fates seemed to weave the same props into their tapestry. Rises and falls. Tea. Snow. Quietness. Storms. False sense of security.

"My lady," Walter said behind her. She was brought back to the present. She had not even heard him knock.

"Report."

"Tea, first?" Walter offered, placating. He filled her cup.

Integra sighed and stared into the steaming liquid. Darjeeling. It always had to be Darjeeling.

"Worried?"

"Very."

"You shouldn't be. That young man and I have seldom gotten along but I will say this for him: he knows how to watch his back."

Coming from Walter, this was high praise. Still. "I'm not worried about his self-preservation. Or is that precisely what I'm worried about?"

"He can be ruthless," Walter agreed, "when it comes to defending his own. As _you_ can be, my lady."

Integra let out a puff of inaudible laughter. The smile that graced her lips was savage. "Years of covert investigation and we have found out, that on top of abuse and neglect, the Queen had embezzled Alucard's assets, conspired with Richard to usurp Hellsing, collaborated with members of the court and the Convention, who in turn willfully ignored her atrocities." She gritted her teeth. "I'm going to make them pay, Walter _._ "

"I would not expect anything less, my lady," The butler said, monocle flashing as he bowed deep.

"Did you find about the Catholic delegation?"

"Yes. To be brief, there was nothing unusual about those you saw at the ball. However, their numbers do not match up. There were thirteen in my report. At the ball there were only twelve."

She frowned. Who was the thirteenth?

Something was not adding up.

"It's too quiet." Integra held a cigar to her mouth, prepared to light it, then stopped. She crushed the cigar on her desk. "Walter, I need to leave."

Walter glanced at the snow. It would be a treacherous road. Yet he was well aware that it would be useless to try to dissuade her. "Do be careful."

"I won't promise you this time, Walter," she said as she grabbed her sabre. "It never works out."

xx

xx

What point was there in staying indoors when he was not going to appear properly mournful? Alucard went out, in the lightest of winter attire with his sable cloak around him. Snow was his element. He had been conceived in snow, born in the depth of winter, died and reborn on a snowy day. And now, it seemed, he would be crowned in it. How beautiful it would be when the red of his enemies spilt on its white. What a delightful season it would be to be wed. Integra had always looked lovely in the snow.

How could he pretend that the old king's impending death saddened him, when he could almost taste the triumph? Truthfully, he cared little for the kingdom and its frivolities; but Integra did, taking her late father's message of serving this land with integrity to heart. So he would give it to her. She would be at his side and they would rebuild it to their vision.

For, having plucked God's masterpiece right from His hands, should he not rule a realm that could rival His as well?

Whatever the Queen had in store could come at him at any minute and he would welcome it with open arms. He was exuberant and he needed an outlet.

"How useful are you in a hunt?" he asked his valet behind him.

Two thousand days of employment later, Dillon, the stable boy turned valet de chambre, was feeling quite sure of himself. He liked his job. His master was far from being the most finicky, even if he did spring sudden inquiries such as this on him. Yet they did make him stutter. "M-my lord?"

"A hunt, Dillon," Alucard said patiently. "Get the horses."

The valet did, coming back quickly with two horses that whinnied in annoyance at the weather. At the sight of the prince, with his red eyes that loomed through the flurry of snow, they quieted.

Had they been going to battle, Alucard's massive form on the black stallion would have speared through the souls of the stoutest of cavalry. Dillon did not think any animal would dare show itself with him a predator in its woods.

"Er, with all due respect, Your Highness," he said, as they ventured into a forest, "but _would_ there be anything to catch?"

It was a politer way of asking whether it would not be pointless. He got away with it, though. Very few people could.

"On the contrary, this kind of weather ensures that there will only be one specific kind of game." With that, Alucard raised his rifle and fired.

The bullet hit something behind a tree. Dillon rode his horse to the fallen creature and gasped. "It's one of those things that have been turning up in town!"

"Little beasties that have no sense of when and where they are welcome," Alucard said scathingly. "Skulking in the depth of woods and the silence of winter to ambush unsuspecting passersby. Even _I_ have standards."

Dillon was not sure what to say to that.

"Come along," Alucard said, and they rode further into the forest.

It turned out Dillon was useless in a hunt, not that it mattered. He did not know what these beasts had done to pique the prince but he was thankful he had not been anywhere near. Alucard shot down all sorts of things before there was barely an inkling that they were there and when the bullets ran out, he catapulted the rifle through the skull of some impish varmint with wings. Dillon almost felt sorry for it.

Having discarded his firearm, Alucard drew his sword from the saddle. "By the way, is the stable master still giving you trouble?"

The question was out of the blue and it took Dillon a moment to realize what was being referred. The stable master, his old employer, had acted nastily to him since the elevation of his status, badmouthing the prince, giving him a faulty steed when he went down to attend to his duties as messenger to Sir Hellsing. One day, when he had returned later than expected, the prince had asked what kept him, and he had replied that the horse had had a loose horseshoe.

The next day, the horse had been fitted with new shoes. And the stable master was gone. No one knew where he went.

He did not want to know.

His successor was pleasant enough. "No, Your Highness," Dillon answered.

After two thousand days of employment, Dillon was sure of his loyalty to his master. The prince took care of his people. It was just that the scope of "his people" was extremely narrow and fit very few individuals.

"All is well that ends well, isn't it?" the prince said with smirk.

_. . . there appeared . . . in heaven . . . a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet . . . upon her head a crown of twelve stars . . ._

_. . . another wonder . . . a great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns upon his heads . . ._

Alucard stopped.

_"And there was war . . . And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him."_

"My lord…?" Dillon asked. He started. The prince's eyes were violently and venomously red.

"Dillon," he said conversationally, tone belying the malice that reeked from those eyes, "why don't you return to the castle?"

"I—"

"Don't make me tell you twice."

The last time he had heard that, the prince had returned in the dead of night with blood spotting his shirt.

Dillon swallowed. "I'll…see to the others, Your Highness."

When the valet reversed his horse and sped off, the voice grew clearer in the dense forest. Alucard nudged his reluctant steed forward, the shadows under its hooves twisting and curling in agitation.

_"Then I heard a loud voice in heaven say: Now have salvation and power come, and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Anointed. For the accuser of our brothers is cast out, who accuses them before our God day and night._

_"They conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony; love for life did not deter them from death._

_"Therefore rejoice you heavens, and you who dwell in them. But woe to you, earth and sea, for the Devil has come down to you in great fury, for he knows he has—"_

"...but a short time," Alucard concluded.

The speaker in the clearing looked up at him and his face split into a wide grin. " _Amen!"_

"Amen," Alucard mocked. "And who do we have here? A lost Catholic? I didn't realize the clergy employed mad men now."

The Catholic tossed aside the carcass of the beast he had felled, which was riddled with blade marks. "Sanity as it is known on the mortal plane is a myth until we ascend to His embrace. Are you a child of God or the child of Satan?"

What a tiresome question. "They tend to call me the latter yet I answer to neither. I serve no God or Devil but an idol."

"The worse of the lot, then. A heathen!"

"If the shoe fits," Alucard purred. "What has brought you to these parts, Father? Come to convert a lost little Lamb?"

"Lost, very; little, quite far from it; Lamb, devoured by the dragon. You have grown into a frightening picture, prince of the realm. I was at your birth." The priest's grin widened. "The years of wait were worth it. You have become a formidable foe."

"Delighted to meet your expectations, I am sure," Alucard said, inclining his head. "I see. You are the thirteenth delegate. Judas Iscariot, who lurks in the shadows. For what, I wonder? Did the Queen command you? Has the sacred obeyed the bidding of the secular?"

"No one bid me, demon. That whorish woman did ask me to kill you, but I laughed in her face. I, Alexander Anderson, am conducted by the voice of God, and it is in His name that I will tear your heart and lay it down at His feet."

Alucard laughed. At the sound the stallion reared, flailing its front hooves, and charged at the priest.

The first bayonet was embedded in the horse's heart and the other narrowly missed the rider's head. As the horse lost control of itself, Alucard grabbed hold of a branch and dislodged himself from its back. The beast of burden fell to its side in the snow with a great thud, sending a mixture of blood and powdery snow everywhere. In the chaos it caused along with the freshly falling snow and the massive carcass, Anderson raised his bayonets just in time to block the tip of Alucard's sword. Their blades met with an earsplitting clash.

"The first sacrifice," Alucard said, his smile as lethal as his sword.

"Without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness," Anderson agreed, and flung back his opponent. Alucard jumped over the dead horse. The two men circled each other with it as their axle in their bastard of a dance.

The small clearing was already overwhelmingly full of ghastly sights: the hulking Catholic priest, the imp he had slain, the dead horse. Red and black and white. Yet no one would be foolish enough to stray their attention from the self-identified idolater whose eyes were the core of the sun and positively blistering to behold. Anderson tutted. "This kingdom is damned, to have nourished a monster such as you."

"Nourished?" Alucard repeated. He thought the notion hilarious. "It couldn't wait to get rid of me! It seems now, however, it has finally stepped up its efforts. You are without doubt the worthiest opponent I have ever encountered! Are those lovely bayonets of yours going to draw my blood, Father Anderson?"

"That they will," Anderson vowed, leaping up in the air with his blades poised south.

In the snow, the movement of their metal was almost blinding. Alucard deflected the blow yet missed an additional blade that had suddenly materialized in the priest's fingers. It grazed his cheek and he hissed.

_Fucking blessed silver._

He retaliated with a swing of his sword and slashed the man's forearm. Blood for blood. Anderson retreated and threw two of his infinite bayonets. Alucard dodged. They hit a cedar tree behind him, half-uprooting it by sheer force, and the air exploded in peppery white.

_There._

His eyes flashed when he saw the opening.

_One thrust._

He lunged. The sword went through Anderson's stomach.

The priest spat out blood.

Alucard exhaled an exultant breath as his foe stumbled backwards and slid down next to the horse. He stuck out his tongue and licked at the cut on his cheek, which was gradually healing. "You've come well-prepared, Father, but even you cannot escape death by my hands. Don't worry; in honor of this fight I'll give you a proper burial."

The priest thrashed, and was making a noise that sounded like he was choking.

Alucard's expression flickered. His visage twisted, and he let out a low growl.

The man was not choking. He was _laughing._

Anderson wrapped a fist around the hilt of the sword and wrenched it out, dropping it. The amount of life essence that was drenching his cassock was decreasing with each second. The mortal wound was knitting itself.

"A Regenerator..." Alucard trailed off.

"Aye," Anderson grinned, and flicked his fingers.

_One strike._

The bayonet pierced his sternum.

Alucard coughed violently, clutching at the burning weapon. He crumpled to the ground and his blood left a streak on the cold wetness. The Judas Priest stood up and brushed his robes.

Alexander Anderson trudged forward. His smile was in full. He seized the fallen by the hair and removed the bayonet with a hard yank. He drew it to the neck. The blessed silver made a fine red line on the prince's snow white skin.

Then the priest stilled. He seemed to be having second thoughts. He took the blade away from the neck and slowly moved it up. And up.

To the red, red eyes.

"I sense an emptiness about you," said Anderson. "You could have succumbed to that void a long time ago. But something has given you hope. What—or _who_ —is it? Your idol?"

Alucard snarled, teeth coated in blood. In his mind, a pair of blue diamond eyes gazed at him.

"Whoever it is—"

The blood red orbs reflected off the silver.

"—will never see these again."

 _No!_ her voice screamed.

The bayonet tore through his eyes.

xx

xx

Integra winced. Something got caught in her eye.

_A snowflake…_

She blinked. A teardrop fell.

xx

xx

xx

xx

* * *

 

NOTES

Spring...is a difficult season for me...dust everywhere, pollen everywhere, the weather can't make up its mind and the _insects_. And all this warmth makes me sleepy. At least in this fic-verse I can make it winter however long I want. I hope you all are having lovely weather, though. Please know that I appreciate you all so much. Your words, your feedback of any sort are the best things of my day. Don't catch a cold!


	11. X

xx

**X**

xx

"Integra."

The sixteen-year-old girl frowned in her sleep. Opening her eyes a sliver, she found the clock hanging over her bedroom door and read thirty minutes past midnight. She squeezed her lids shut and snuggled into the mattress. Why had she woken?

"Integra."

Her eyes shot back open, then narrowed. Slowly, she turned on her side.

And nearly fell off.

"Alucard!" she half-screamed, sitting up at ninety degrees. "What on earth?"

The prince was leaning on her bedside table with a hand supporting his chin, his hair tousled, a riding cloak hanging off on one shoulder and looking indecently at ease. He held up a finger. "Shh. We don't want to wake that butler of yours."

"Are you kidding me?" she whispered furiously. She grabbed her glasses and shoved them on as if better eyesight would prove he was a hallucination. "Alucard, you had better be a figment of a very vivid dream or so help me, I will throw you out the window!"

"Now, now, that's no way to speak to someone who's made an arduous journey to see you."

She gaped at him. "You cannot be serious. It's past _midnight_."

Alucard failed to see what the problem was. "So? You know I prefer the night. It's as good an hour as any. It can be terribly boring being the only one awake with no one around to hassle."

"And I suppose I am the best person for you to hassle," she said dryly.

"Certainly not. I hold you in the most sacred of regards." But there was a facetious little curl to his lips. Integra breathed deeply. _Lord, give me strength._

"Alucard, have you considered that maybe I—like everyone else—might need to sleep?"

He blinked. "Oh..." He was stumped. "You have a point there."

She could throttle him. "You realize this _now?"_

To his credit, he looked chastened. "It's a beautiful night out, Integra. I only wanted to share it with you. It's been too long since we've had time together."

It was her turn to be stumped. Alucard's eyes were wide and earnest, glowing embers in the dark, conveying his sincerity. She sighed, drew herself fully out of her covers and perched on the side of the bed. His gaze flicked over her frilly long-sleeved nightgown and his mouth twitched, though he was wise enough to keep quiet. He was walking a fine line as it was without incurring her wrath by mentioning how mesmeric she was in the silk.

Like him, she propped up her head on one hand and leaned in, so that the oil lamp on the table alone was between them. The tips of her nails of her other hand met his at the center. A lazy smile unfurled on his pale lips at her adjustments.

Despite her misgivings, Integra matched his expression with her own pleased smile. "So you came all the way here, at this time of night, to see me? How did you make it up here, then?"

"What a silly question. I used the front door and climbed up the stairs." He smirked at her withering glance. "You should hire a new porter. The one downstairs is a heavy sleeper and didn't even stir when I opened the door right next to him."

Integra shook her head. "Unbelievable. That means even more paperwork."

"Are they working you hard, my Integra?"

There it was, that possessive adjective again. Its utterances were becoming increasingly frequent. As much as it had thrown her for a loop at first, now she did not mind. It meant that he, in turn, was hers. "It's not too bad. Just very tedious."

"And the knights?"

"The other knights...are polite to me, as usual." Her smile turned weary. "At least, they're not criticizing every step I take."

"Don't trouble yourself over whatever they have to say, Integra. You are worthier of your position than they are." Alucard leaned in closer, and all she could see was red. "Those old men, they simply slid into their seats, while you fought for yours. The blood on your hands is your scepter."

Integra said nothing, merely lacing their fingers together and studying their contrasts. Pale and tan. Cold and warm. Both covered in invisible blood. He closed his palm, trapping her fingers, raised them up and kissed them. The gesture was brief, it was supposed to be chaste, but it seemed to leave a mark that seared her bones. He watched her through his bangs as he held her hand aloft.

At eighteen years of age—his birthday had been two weeks ago—Alucard was near perfecting a deceptively lanky frame that was in truth graceful and deadly. His cheekbones were sharp and his voice deep and pleasing to the ear. He was, if not for his irises, irresistible and he knew it. Yet for all his teasing and intrusion of personal space, he respected her boundaries. Integra was grateful. She really did not need to be a besotted ninny on top of everything else.

"You said it was a beautiful night," she reminded him.

He beamed and the tension vanished. "That's right." He tugged her to her feet. "Let's go out on the ledge, my lady Hellsing."

"This is so inappropriate," she said under her breath, as she followed him in her nightgown barefooted. His low laughter pervaded the room and drifted out the window. The pair were undaunted by the precarious space provided by the ledge. It was just wide enough to settle down, although Integra had to tuck her feet away from the cold. Alucard bent his long legs to the side and wrapped his cloak around them. That was when she saw the sky.

"Wow."

Alucard, too, made an appreciative noise, not at the stars.

Their vantage point offered a crisp view of the south. It was a moonless December night, the kind of night that allowed nothing to come between mortal perception and the denizens of heaven. Even the dimmest stars were shining prettily. The galactic trail was perpendicular to the horizon whereupon Orion was out hunting with his hounds nipping at his heels.

"I've been so busy and tired that it's been so long since I saw the night sky." Integra stretched her torso as far out as she dared and Alucard gripped the back of her dress to prevent her from falling. She did not notice. "It's beautiful."

No. _She_ was beautiful. Did she know? How the stars were a mere backdrop for the glow of her hair, the sparkle in her eyes? She could replace Sirius itself and no one would tell the difference. His own eyes smoldered. He wanted to kiss her very, very badly. He was, however, aware that it would not be entirely welcome, not when her attention was bound outward. He suppressed his urges. For now.

He linked his arm with hers instead. "Aren't you glad now that you're awake?"

Integra scoffed, yet when she turned to look at him her expression was very soft. "I still say coming all the way here is excessive, though I'll have to let it slide. Next time, Alucard, send word."

"But then I won't get to see your sleeping face," Alucard quipped, and before she could censure him as a lecher he asked, "How well-versed are you in the constellations?"

She squinted at him until she let herself be distracted by his question. She returned her gaze to the sky. "There's Taurus." Integra traced out the horns of the bull. "And Gemini and Auriga above it. Next to them, there's Perseus..."

"And in his grasp, Medusa, the Gorgon," Alucard said. He quoted the _Iliad,_ his voice sibilant against her ear. _"The Gorgon's head, a ghastly sight, deformed and dreadful, and a sign of woe."_

"Leaving a pile of corpses in its wake," Integra murmured. "With such an implication, I can't help but think of Richard and his ilk."

"How deliciously vindictive of you. As for me, I think of the Queen."

"Oh?" she replied absently. She knew only vaguely that Alucard and the Queen hated each other. It was not a subject he talked about often.

And it was with absolute nonchalance that Alucard said, "Yes. She did murder me as a child."

Wait.

_What?_

"What?" Integra stared at him. "What did you just say?"

"Look, the Seven Sisters..."

"Alucard." Integra grabbed his cheeks between her hands. He merely had on a glib little smile as though he had uttered nothing out of the ordinary. "What did you say?"

"Why the fuss? Have I never told you? I was seven. My dear stepmother served me poison tea. I died, then came back to life." He said this as if he was discussing the weather.

She was squeezing his cheeks so hard, he grimaced. She was relentless. "The Queen..."

"It was nothing, Integra. Really. I'm here, am I not?"

Her hands trembled. Her eyes, blazing into the fires of blue stars, bore into his. Alucard read a myriad of emotions in them and his lips curled in distaste. "Don't you go and pity me."

"Pity? _Pity?"_ she screeched quietly. "You think what I'm feeling is pity?" She shoved him into the wall and actually stood up on the ledge. "You bloody idiot."

Now he was getting worried. "Sit down, Integra."

"How dare you insult me this way."

"Sit down, you stupid girl," Alucard hissed.

"Listen here, you git." Integra seized him by the cravat and shook him. Her hair whipped at him from all sides. "Don't you dare order me. You have no right, not after insulting me by pretending what you said is 'nothing' and degrading my feelings to 'pity.' How could you? Do I only amount to that in your eyes?"

No. _Nonononono_. More than that. More than all the stars in the sky. More than his soul. She was everything to him.

He covered the hands holding him up. "I'm sorry," he said. He knew he had gone too far. "You can berate me all you like. You can even punch me. But please, sit down. It's dangerous. I'll tell you everything." His hair fell across his face and suddenly he was drained. "Everything."

Her grip slackened. She let him go. She sat back down yet did not say anything. She looked... _disappointed_. Ah, he had gone and done it this time. It made him desperate. He clutched at her sleeve. "Please say you forgive me."

She simply stared at him for a while and he feared she never would. It would be just as well. The only thing he had ever grown was his roses and they fed on corpses. It would be so typical of _Dracula_ to ruin everything! But she was a better person than he could possibly imagine, his Integra. She sighed and drew him into her arms. His age, his height did not matter. In her embrace, he was the child. He clung to her warmth.

"You were seven," she prompted.

"Truly, that is all there is to it," he murmured into her hair. "I was fed poison, I died and came back. I can't help being dismissive. It's not as if I'm in hell right now." _Far from it._

"You _died_ and came back? How can that be? Death is final."

Alucard laughed shallowly. Integra bit her lip, deciding at the moment to move on from his strange wording. "Why didn't you kill her?"

"Why don't you let me kill the ones who slander you?" he countered. "It's the same. I didn't see the point. And I wanted her suffering to be drawn out. Years and years of attempts met with miserable failures." She inhaled sharply at that. He went on. "There will be a day, Judgment Day, when she will receive her due hundredfold."

"How deliciously vindictive of you," Integra said, using his exact words. "I suppose I see what you mean. However. Let's get one thing straight."

She cupped his face. Alucard turned his head, just a little, so he could kiss her palm. His eyes were subdued.

"You're comparing the ones who slander me to the one who tried to _kill_ you." Integra was getting angry all over again. "Is your life only worth that much?"

Alucard frowned. He was not sure if he understood her question. To his life he gave no meaning. He ate, drank, and breathed as was required; he felt vengeance toward the ones who did him harm—yet it was an empty shell. If he were to be defeated fair and square, he would not be opposed to welcoming death once more.

At least, that had been the idea, before he met her.

Integra released him, her fingers over his kiss, and swiveled toward the cosmic vista when she saw his incomprehension. She found the problematic star Algol and imagined it anew as the Queen's head. Her feet dangled over the edge. "If we could see the opposite side, we would see Lyra, the lyre of Orpheus. When his Eurydice died he went down to hell to retrieve her." She closed her eyes, and the image of her thus, in her dress with her hair fluttering in the breeze, was forever engraved in his memory.

"If I fell from here, and broke my neck on the pavement, what would you do?"

He scraped his nails on the stone. He snarled. "Don't say that."

"Would you barter with the gods with a song?"

"I won't reenact a tried and failed attempt of a cowardly musician," Alucard spat. "I'll simply fall after you."

Her heart simultaneously blossomed and broke at his declaration. She kept her tone cool. "And if our roles were reversed, what do you think I would do?"

He felt the wind knocked out of him at her implication.

It was his turn to seize and shake her by the shoulders. "You—ridiculous—!"

She glared at him. "Be quiet and unhand me."

He obliged by clashing his teeth into her ear. _"I'm not worth it."_

Hands, small and firm, pushed him away.

"Do you see now why I was so upset? Listen carefully." The blue flames of her eyes licked at his marrow. "Just as you will fall after me, I will fall after you. Straight into hell. And we two, being the misfits that we are, are not going fit into the court of Hades and his queen. No. We'll run them out of their thrones. We'll make ourselves a paradox. Because that's the kind of pair we are, you and I."

"Beautifully phrased," Alucard rasped. "You are indeed my Integra. My integral part, my integrity. The obsession that crowds the hearts and minds of those who serve God. The passion that befalls their lips as they pray for salvation! All of that pales in comparison to how I worship _you_."

"Don't take my words too literally. I certainly don't need your worship," Integra said. She sounded perturbed. "You have me on a high enough pedestal as it is, and I don't even understand why."

Red, red eyes arrested hers.

"You're still here, aren't you? You never left."

And finally, he kissed her.

She was so surprised, she punched him in the stomach.

The laughter that pealed out of him threatened to wake the whole manor and Integra grabbed him and crushed her mouth to his. Yes, that was her reason. To shut him up. Not because his lips were soft. Not because her heart overflowed.

Not because she loved him.

Her eyes fluttered shut.

It was an awkward, inexperienced kiss yet the passion in it, spreading like wildfire now that it was unbridled at last, consumed them both. Alucard poured his love—for despite being the tainted, wretched, greedy thing it was, it was love—into that kiss. He poured his worship. He poured his want and need. When Integra raked down his mane and slanted her luscious lips urgently against his, he almost keened. How could he deserve this, deserve her?

But of course, heaven and hell would have to be torn asunder for him to let go of her.

"Alucard," she said when they parted, their hot and cold breaths coalescing in short gasps, "I forgive you this time, but I don't want you depreciating yourself, nor do I want you to make me out to be more than I am. You are my prince and I am your knight."

"Forget all that and be my princess," he said.

Integra withdrew, her expression unreadable. "Alucard."

"Be my _queen_."

"Let me be your knight first," she said.

He clenched his jaw. "Why is it that you always reject me when I propose to solidify our relationship?"

"For heaven's sake, Alucard, I explained this to you yesterday."

That gave him pause.

His brows furrowed. "Yesterday?"

She brushed a lock of hair away from his face, as she had done many years ago. Curiously, her fingers bore the scent of tobacco, which they had not until now.

Integra had not started smoking until she was eighteen.

When she spoke next, her voice was faraway.

_"I'm going to kill that priest for what he did to your eyes."_

He felt said eyes become wet. He reached up and his fingers came back coated in dark liquid.

Blood.

Alucard looked at her, calmly. "Is this a dream, my Integra?"

 _"It's a memory,"_ she answered. _"A reminder."_

He smiled brittlely. "Ever my keeper. Even in my subconscious."

The ledge vanished.

The ground vanished.

The sky vanished.

_"Now, it's time to wake up."_

They were falling in a bottomless chasm. She was no longer a sixteen-year-old girl but a woman of twenty. He was no longer a fool of a teen but a fool of a man. In the air, Integra pulled him close and whispered in his ear.

_"I forgave you that time, Alucard."_

Her breath smelled of camellias and her finest cigar.

_"But I won't forgive you if you come back to me as a dead body."_

xx

xx

"What the fuck do you mean, you can't let me in?"

Sir Integral Fairbrook Wingates Hellsing did not swear. Usually. She thought it appallingly indecorous.

In instances such as these, however, she made allowances.

"It's the Queen's orders, Sir," the gatekeeper said, sweating. "She told us not to let anyone in. She wants the castle to be quiet and modest in preparation of His Majesty's passing..."

" _Modest?_ What absolute load of shit!" Integra was livid. She had walked through a foot of snow after her stubborn horse had refused to budge in the middle of the road, to this. As a result her hair and her temper were spiraling out of control. "This is unacceptable."

The two burly gatekeepers quailed. This was the famous Sir Integral Hellsing and she was terrifying when angry. "Sir, please, we're only following orders."

Had it been Alucard in her place, he would have killed these two already. Or heavily incapacitated them at the very least. In killing innocents she had instilled in him the barest restraint, but as he liked to remind her: "When one chooses to follow an order, Integra, they aren't innocent anymore. They are complicit. Think of the maids and servants that left you. You may think them innocent, but any one of them could have defied their orders or even relayed you a message. Yet they didn't, and that is why I relegate them to the lowest of the low."

"If you can't let me in," Integra bit out, "then bring me His Highness."

The men cringed. As requests went, this one was the worst. Luckily, he was unavailable. "He's not in, Sir. His Highness went out hunting a few hours ago."

Integra's face darkened.

"He did now, did he?"

_That bloody idiot!_

When he returned she was going to have words.

She thrust a cigar at the men, who jumped back instinctively. "Light."

"Er..."

_"Light."_

"Yessir!" One of them produced a match and the other struck it on his boot. Integra rolled her eyes. They were a matching set of Tweedle-dum and Tweedle-dee. When her cigar was lit, she sat down on the snow-covered footing of the gate, crossed her legs and swirled the smoke in her mouth, much to the bewilderment of her audience.

"Er...Sir..."

"I," she expelled, "am going to wait here until these gates open."

They looked panicked. "We don't—"

"Or until His Highness comes back."

They _were_ panicked. "Please, have mercy on us, Sir!"

"Hmm. I see you two aren't complete dunderheads." She hid her sly smile. "You realize that not even I can guarantee what will happen if he comes back to find his own knight out in the cold."

"The gates are open, Sir Hellsing!" they announced in unison.

"Took you long enough." With her coat and her hair billowing behind her, Integra marched through. Once in, she stopped and said, "I'll remember you two."

As the gatekeepers went into a tizzy over what that could possibly mean, the lone knight blew another drag of smoke out of her mouth and watched it escape to the cinereous sky. She walked on, her flinty gaze on the godforsaken castle at the end of the shoveled avenue. She remembered as a child imagining it was a dragon's lair where it kept its maiden, which turned out to be partly true. There was a dragon, and it was the dragon that was locked away.

"Of course, it would have saved me a world of misery if that git was, for once, in the castle," she grumbled.

She also remembered what she told Alucard. "Sometimes, one has no choice but to follow an order."

She was thirty steps from the entrance when she sensed a great upheaval in the atmosphere, a swell of muted sound breaking forth from the walls. She heard the voice of the steward over the commotion, loud and clear—

_"The king is dead!"_

Integra froze.

_"Long live the Queen!"_

The cigar dropped out of her mouth.

Her feet were moving before her mind registered, running to the grand doors, which suddenly burst open. A line of soldiers stormed out. They drew their weapons as she drew her sabre.

"Move aside," she said.

"Sir Integral Hellsing, you are under arrest for treason against the crown!"

"Treason? Me? Against the crown of whom?" Integra drawled. "That carnivalesque woman who threw a party on the brink of her husband's death?"

"Anything you say from this moment on will be counted as treasonous, Miss Hellsing," the head guard warned, discarding her title. "Drop your weapon and submit yourself for interrogation."

Integra put a hand on her hip and held her sabre loosely in the other, giving the illusion of acquiescence. The illusion was shattered when she spoke. " _Sir_ Hellsing. I wonder how I will fare against a whole battalion."

"Miss Hellsing!"

"Perhaps a head or two?" She raised her blade.

The soldiers reacted. Their swords met with a sharp clang, one against one-too-many, upon the threshold. Integra strained under the force of a half-dozen swords weighing down on her, piercing her coat and grazing her skin. Yet she refused to budge. "Treason? Don't make me laugh. And what is it that you're doing? You're defying His late Majesty's will. The prince," she grunted out, in all honesty feeling like decapitating Alucard herself for leaving her in this mess, "should be king."

"We have no obligation to answer you, Integral Hellsing. Surrender or be executed!"

"Who's making such a racket on this fabulous day?"

The swords lowered.

With a disgusted look, Integra retracted her sabre as well. She straightened her lapels and flipped back her hair. It danced in the wind, long and fair and scraping like scythes. It contrasted with the Queen's tightly coiffed russet hair.

"Queen Wilhelmina," she greeted.

In powder and crinoline, the Queen emerged, pursing her pouty lips. "Sir Integral, what is the meaning of this? I told the gatekeepers to not let anyone in."

"I came to pay my respects, and to assist my new _king_ to his throne. Which…seems to be compromised." Integra dug her nails into the hilt of her blade.

The Queen was in full coronation regalia.

She giggled. "Sir Integral, haven't you heard? There's no king anymore. There's just me, the Queen!"

"What are you talking about?" Integra snapped.

"Such indecorum! It doesn't matter, I suppose. For I have won this game." The woman opened her arms.

"The once would-be king, our dear prince—is _dead!"_

Integra thought that perhaps the Queen had gone barmy.

"Alucard," she said without emotion. "Dead."

"Whatever his name is, he's dead," Queen Wilhelmina nodded. "In fact, he was dead long before His Majesty passed away. By now he'll be bleeding corpse in the middle of the woods. I made sure of it this time, so sure of it! Now, little Hellsing girl, lay your weapon down, or your entire house will be beheaded along with you!"

If the Queen and her soldiers were waiting for Sir Integral Hellsing to show any sign of shock or grief, they were disappointed. Integra merely took out a cigar and placed it between her teeth. She struck a match herself this time and lit the end. The Queen's levity died in the face of the smoke.

"Aren't you going to say anything?" she demanded.

Integra took a drag. It calmed her temper.

It also kept her trembling to a bare minimum.

"No."

The Queen's mien crumpled, her mask no longer beautiful. "So be it! Integral Hellsing, you are hereby arrested for treason! Take her away to the dungeons!"

"No need," Integra said. "I'll carry myself." She tossed her sabre into the arms of the nearest soldier.

Her teeth sunk into the cigar and she could taste the tobacco leaves.

Alucard, dead? Hah! She would murder him first.

xx

xx

xx

xx

* * *

 

NOTES

I love stargazing! It's so profound to see those twinkling little dots and realize they're larger and further away than we can ever hope to imagine.

Hello loveliest readers and reviewers! Thank you all a thousand times for your kind words. What did you think of this chapter, I wonder? Your feedback feeds my heart. Can you believe it's already April?

 


	12. XI

xx

**11**

xx

_drip..._

The freshly fallen snow, a white canvas.

_drip..._

The trees, gnarled and bare, a crone's hand.

_drip..._

Blood, the ink of life.

_drip..._

The prince.

A rattling sigh escaped him.

There was little a newly blind man could do, other than to move his feet and hope they would lead him to a road oft traveled. Yet he held no delusions. Not even the Good Samaritan would help him, this monster of a man, his blood running down his face in rivulets, his shirt a reddened rag. He had shed his cloak a long time ago, as a beast would its fur. Yet again, he held no delusions. With or without it, he was a beast in its cage, the cage of his mind.

_"Must you be so dramatic?"_

He paused, his teeth grinding together, as another wave of pain originated from his sternum.

He raised his hand, groping in the air, until he found a tree he could lean on. The bark cut into his fingers as he clutched at it, waiting for the wave to dissipate. The snow from its branches dusted his hair which hung matted over his eyes.

Or what had once been eyes.

He started to move again, only to slip on the snow. His hand went scraping down the trunk. He gave up for a while, lying sprawled on the base of the tree. Then he slowly undid his cravat and wrapped the cotton-backed fabric around his abrasions.

_"You still have that?"_

Of course. She had given it to him.

With his wrapped hand he lifted himself up.

_"On your feet now, Alucard."_

He resumed his wandering.

Alas, there was little a newly blind man could do. The loss of sight meant he had to rely on his other senses, and though they had always been exceptional, none of them meant much on the arena that was the snow-covered forest. If anything, they were almost as impaired as his sight given the extent of his injuries. What was he going to smell, his blood? And his ears were filled with the raspy noise he made when he breathed.

And her voice.

_"Watch your step."_

He delved into the recesses of his mind. They were no darker than the front of his unseeing eyes. In fact, the shadows there soothed him. He entertained whatever fancies that brewed, and they were _loud_. He had never realized how loud thoughts could be. And because he had a very good memory, they were vivid as well. Vexingly, teasingly realistic.

Integra's voice from various points in his life flitted around his head like butterflies. In the absence of their corporeal mistress they graced him as intangible yet exquisite images. At this moment, he saw her at age thirteen, in a blue summer dress and a straw hat, her skin tawny and healthy and her diamond eyes gazing at him sternly from under the brim.

_"Come on."_

Despite himself, a smile formed on his chapped lips.

Winter's wraith followed summer's illusion, dutifully.

He would show Alexander Anderson.

When the priest had torn through his eyes, he had not cried out. Why bother? In some aspects it was borderline welcome. The people would accept a blind king rather than a red-eyed one. Make a sob story out of it. Wring them out of tears and snot. Trample on their foolish, fickle hearts.

_"But I love your eyes."_

A facsimile of young Integra, of when she had spoken those words, had echoed in his mind unbidden. She had blushed so prettily then.

That had been the last thought he had.

In the aftermath of his defeat, he had wallowed in the darkness only near-death experiences could manufacture. It had been like this at his first death. A tar blackness, made of the same mold as hopelessness. A quagmire he would be dragged into for eternity. He had been stuck there...or had he? He scarcely reflected upon that day, but when he did, he could conjure a vague sensation of escaping its confines. For an instant, he had been elsewhere. There had been voices, falling branches and—

Blue. Something blue.

As blue as her eyes, which had been serious when she had threatened to never forgive him if he came back dead, thus rousing him from his stupor. He had woken up laughing, though it fucking hurt with the wound in his chest. His Integra, scalding as ever, even as a dream!

Above him, he heard Alexander Anderson sigh.

"Ah..." Alucard let out, barely audible. "She will be furious. She did always say I'm too proud for my own good."

"Strange creature you are," the priest said gruffly. "Laughing on your deathbed."

"It is a bed I will soon rise from, Father." His smile was full of teeth. "By then, for your own sake, you had best be far, far away. I won't play around next time."

Anderson cackled. "Such words to come from a hemorrhaging idolater!"

"An idolater who is as passionate in his prayers as you are, Father Anderson."

"And does she condone your sin of Pride, this idol of yours?"

"Certainly not," Alucard purred, even as blood trickled from his mouth and eyes, and fed the puddle underneath. "She herself is a believer of God and a vicious defender of morality. But she can be lenient with me, which is more than I deserve."

The Judas Priest looked down at him pityingly.

"Without the stigma of your eyes, those reds that have cultivated you into a monstrosity, you are nothing but a lost child, clinging to an inferior Madonna."

"That's right," he susurrated. "I am a product of a forgotten winter's wish. A child of snow white, blood red, and ebony black is all I will ever be. Yet 'inferior'? I'll rip your tongue out for that slight."

It had stopped snowing. The very last snowflake drifted into the clearing, landing in the space between the two men. Anderson grinned. The feeble rays of the clouded sun bounced off his cross. He held his Bible at the ready.

"Let's see, demon."

Loose leaves engulfed him.

"Will she be enough for you to find your way back?"

He was gone. The grounds were left desecrated by dead creatures and one half-alive prince. Alucard dissolved into another round of painful laughter. "What—foolish—question!"

Of course she was.

_"You have to move, Alucard."_

"But Integra," he said, his lips forming her name with no sound, "it would be so easy to fall asleep."

_"Don't you dare. Don't you dare close your eyes."_

"I have no eyes to close."

_"You know what I mean!"_

My, my, was his imagination on a roll. It was replicating the exact tone she used when he was being purposely difficult. A tone which would no doubt be magnified in real life once she learned he had skived off and gotten himself into this mess. He shivered in anticipation. His Integra was _passionate_ when angry.

What, however, would be the use of inciting her passion if he could not behold it?

And so, somehow, he had forced himself to stand. Somehow, he had managed to walk, and walk and walk and walk, leaving a trail of blood instead of biscuit crumbs, all the way to his current position. One hand bandaged in a red cravat, the other pressing his sternum, his hair sticking to his face, his feet following the lithe steps of summer's Integra.

She was simultaneously near and far, a glowing phantasm amidst shadows. At times she would turn back to see if he was there. The ribbons on her straw hat waved at him, as did her locks of spun gold. She exhibited no qualms about being pursued by a grotesque mass of red and black and white.

_Where are we going, my Integra?_

_"Somewhere you can rest. Keep up."_

He tried, he really did. But he stumbled and went down. A fresh puddle of blood formed beneath his tangled limbs. He buried his face into the snow.

_I'm useless, Integra. I can't be your knight, your prince, much less your king. I can't be your anything._

He squeezed his fists, feeling the residue shards of ice and wood under the cloth carve into his skin. The cravat tightened around his knuckles. He desperately wished the pressure to be the sensation of her hand holding his. If he could concentrate enough, convince himself enough, he could—

_"Hold onto me if you're having trouble."_

He did. He rolled, with painstaking effort, onto his back. He outstretched his bandaged hand toward the canopy of bare trees, thinking that if he could hallucinate enough, he could have her image in his grasp.

Her tan hand loomed in his mind.

He took it.

And quite suddenly, it was summer.

"Alucard," Integra was saying loudly, "I find myself at a loss of what to do with you."

Behind her, the fifteen-year-old prince moaned.

His vision was hazy. Was this another dream? Another memory? Was he here or there? Maybe neither here nor there? Oh, what did it matter. Either way, he was absolutely miserable. Summer. A season of intense heat, longer days, shorter nights.

How he loathed summer.

"This is entirely your fault."

Yes, she was right, as usual. This was all his fault. How he loathed himself.

"I stated multiple times that it was unnecessary. I told you that there wouldn't be much to do. I fretted over you. And what did you say? 'It'll be fine, Integra.' 'I can handle a little bit of heat, Integra.' Well!" Her glasses blazed. "You most certainly are not handling this!"

"Stop yelling," Alucard groaned. "It's making my head hurt."

She spun around so quickly it made _him_ dizzy. Though, at this point, dizziness was a drop in the sea of discomfort he was enduring. This was the longest he had been out on a sunny summer day.

Integra had visited him that morning and had happened to mention that she had to go to town later to run a personal errand. That had spurred him to make this mad decision because one, he had never been to town before and two, he did not want his time with her to be cut short in any way. She was busier now, and her visits few and far between. He had insisted on accompanying her.

She had looked toward the heavily curtained window of his library and then at him, back and forth. "Alucard, are you aware how...bright it is outside today?"

"Sunlight isn't fatal to me," he said breezily.

"Could have fooled me," Integra muttered. Louder, she said, "You hate it. It makes you tired and cranky and it irritates your eyes." She put her hands on her hips. "You're not going and that's final."

"I hate to pull rank on you, but as your prince, I must remind you that _my_ word is final." He linked his arm through hers. "Shall we?"

He felt her bristle beside him and knew he would pay dearly for his dirty pool. "Yes, we shall, and you shall regret this, I swear," he had heard her say.

How he regretted it!

He was melting, positively _melting_ under the summer sun, and his parasol was not helping one bit.

Integra was about to teach him what real yelling sounded like, when she saw his unnaturally ruddy face. "Alucard," she said, putting a hand to his forehead, "you're burning up!"

Alucard mumbled his answer.

"I can't believe this. Walter! He's burning up!"

"Oh dear. I do hope our prince won't dissolve into a puddle," said the butler amusedly.

He could not even muster a retort. He felt a large, wrinkled, unwelcome hand on his forehead and he floundered. Walter heaved out a sigh. "I'll go get the coach, my lady."

"I'll be waiting in the shade. Alucard? Alucard! Stay with me!"

"Integra..." he moaned.

"Hold onto me if you're having trouble walking," she ordered, "and don't you dare close your eyes, I will not be dragging you." As if she was not dragging him along with her already. He was hardly conscious of where she was leading him, yet when she settled him on the grass where he could feel shadows and a very slightly cooler air, he knew they were under a tree. She took his parasol from him. "Lie down."

He did, his head landing on something other than grass.

Alucard was instantly alert.

He was on her lap.

For the first time since their outing, he smiled.

"You are utterly incorrigible," she said. He could detect the lightest blush on her otherwise annoyed face. "I hope you're happy, Alucard. You've ruined my day."

A lock of her hair brushed against his cheek. He nuzzled it. "Forgive me."

She huffed and adjusted the umbrella on her shoulder. "I'll take my share of the blame. Lord knows why I didn't simply reschedule my plans." She poked him. "With you as insufferable as you are. Honestly, Alucard. It's not even the hottest day of the year."

He hummed. So soft and fragrant, his Integra.

"The valiant winter prince, conquered by the summer sun." She slid a hand under his fringe and grew worried. "You're not cooling down."

"I feel better now," he assured.

"Not enough." Integra moved his head and he grabbed her skirt.

"Where are you going?" he asked, trying not to sound panicked.

She gently pried his fingers away. "I'm going to get something that'll help you. I won't be gone long, a minute tops."

"No!" He reached out, but the fabric of her dress was gone from under him. "Integra! Don't leave me!"

"I'm not leaving you," she said, her voice faint and distant. "I'll be back. I promise."

His vision was becoming cloudy. Or perhaps, it had never been clear to begin with.

"Integra!"

_"I promise."_

"No," he whispered, and he was back in the snow.

How many hours had it been?

His chest was healing. Slowly, due to the silver, yet surely healing. Alucard sat up. His eyes would heal, too. But they were far more complex organs. How long would it take for him to regain them? Possibly months. And what would happen in the months he was out of commission?

That summer day, Integra had left him under the tree for exactly one minute, just as she had promised. She had returned with a cold, wet cloth and put it on his head. "This will help," she had said.

Yet here, in this icy woodland, where would she be?

The sun was setting. At the wake of its goodbye, the nocturnal inhabitants of the forest stirred and blinked warily. In their midst was the king of monsters. He was hurt and angry and the scent of his blood was overpowering. None endeavored to approach him. He and his queen had decimated many of their numbers. They did not want to be next. They scurried out of their holes. The forest was dangerous. They needed to flee.

A hellhound, however, a bit foolhardier than its fellows, decided to do the opposite. Its many orbs glowed an intelligent scarlet as it cautiously crept toward the man.

Alucard was caged in his mind.

The months he would waste in this state. The whorish Queen and her cronies, encroaching on his and Integra's rightful place. A strangled cry rose from his throat. _Integra, Integra. I always seem to make a mess. How ever shall I clean this up?_

 _"You're worthless without her,"_ a voice said. It was not hers. It was his. His voice. The voice of the nameless prince. _"Dracula, you'll never be worthy of her. You've never been, and now that you're blind? Why should she want you? How long will she last until she tires of cleaning up after you?"_

Useless! Unwanted!

_"That is all you will ever be."_

_"Don't listen,"_ Integra's voice said. _"I'm back, and I've brought you a friend."_

xx

xx

They had taken the pistol she had strapped to her leg, her coat and with it her cigars and matches. They had allowed her the cigar she already had in her mouth, it being chewed through the center and nigh useless. When the Queen, who had stuck around in her cell to gloat, had seen that, she had broken into high-pitched giggles that had made Integra want to shoot herself. "Not as composed as you want us to think, Sir Integral!"

"Yes, I'm absolutely shaking in my boots," she deadpanned.

Queen Wilhelmina giggled again. She clasped Integra's shackled hands. "You know, dear, I've never really hated you. If you were truly to be executed, it would be such a waste! If you would renounce the prince, and swear your fealty to me, I'll let you go. Hmm? What do you say?"

"Swear my fealty." Integra tilted her head to the side, as if contemplating. "To you."

"Yes, yes! What do you say?"

Integra smiled.

Then she spat the remains of her cigar on the Queen's face.

The Queen screeched. She backhanded Integra into the bars of her cell, sending her glasses to the floor, breaking them. One of her many rings left a scratch on her cheek. "Impertinent wench!"

"No wonder Richard made a beeline toward you," Integra groused. "You're as shrill as he was."

"I gave you a chance and this is how you repay me?"

The absence of her glasses added a paradoxical clarity to the knight's steel blue eyes. When she spoke, every syllable carried an edge. "Like you gave a chance to Alucard?"

The Queen's lacquered nails grappled Integra's scalp. "You would rather die of your silly devotion to that monster? Integral Hellsing, you don't know anything!" She pushed the younger woman away and took a shaky step back. "Do you know...the fear of being under the same roof as someone who _just won't die?_ While so many others die around him?"

"What a self-serving way of putting it," Integra remarked, serene despite the Queen's manhandling. "I would rather say..." She lowered her voice. "That it was _you_ who led them to the slaughterhouse."

The Queen laughed. "He told you, did he? Then tell me, dear...has he also told you what he did with the bodies?"

For several seconds, Integra was silent.

Then she said, dispassionately, "The Queen of Flowers."

"What are you saying?"

"The rose. The Queen of Flowers." Her eyes were hooded.

He had not told her.

Yet she had always had...a feeling...

_The truth beneath the rose..._

"Were you afraid you would be next, Queen? Perhaps you are afraid still?"

The Queen screamed. "He's dead!"

"Why does it sound like you're convincing yourself?"

"He is! He is dead!" She shuddered. "The mirror told me..."

Mirror? What did that mean?

God, was this woman so vain that she talked to herself in the mirror?

"Alucard will return," Integra said, with conviction founded upon nothing except her belief in him. "And when he does, there will be a place for you in his garden."

Queen Wilhelmina quaked, the tendrils of doubt clawing at her, as sharp and curved as the ends of Integra's hair. Suddenly she could not get away fast enough. "Pity you won't get to see it then, for you will be executed come morning! Nothing will happen to me, Hellsing girl. As for you—you Satan's whore! You are condemned! _Condemned!_ Lock the door," she ordered the guard outside the solitary room. "Do not let anyone in."

Integra expelled a breath of disbelief. To think that woman had been given leeway to traipse as their Queen for all these years. The court was rotten to the core. Things would fall into chaos at this rate.

She closed her eyes in frustration. Right now, her best plan was to wait.

An hour or two at the most. She had to be patient.

_An hour._

She reclined on the bars. Her breathing evened out.

In her shallow sleep, periodically disturbed by her itchy cheek, the noise from upstairs and the unnaturally loud pounding of her heart—which she would only admit to herself was because of Alucard, that inconsiderate bastard—Integra dreamed. They were sporadic and nonsensical. In one scene, Walter and the royal cook were having a baking competition. In another, roses had grown to the size of windmills and were commenting on how fine a meal they were having.

 _"We would love to have seconds, Sir Integral,"_ a rose said.

 _"Seconds!"_ they chorused. _"Seconds!"_

In the last, Alucard was waiting for her.

_"My Integra."_

"Alucard!" Integra barged into whatever dreamscape he had ensconced himself in. "What do you have to say for yourself?"

He was sitting cross-legged in some cold, murky, boundless space. He beckoned her, and she went to him, if only to give him a piece of her mind.

"Alucard—"

 _"Is your hair up or down, my Integra?"_ He inclined his head, and it occurred to her that she could not see his eyes. _"Are you wearing a dress or breeches? I hope it's the latter to both. Your silhouette in a dress is very fetching, and I will always be drawn to the low neckline, but it doesn't compare to your enticing legs in breeches and boots."_

"Alucard, you will be one leg short if you keep talking."

He laughed riotously.

It seemed odd to her that she could not glimpse a hint of red. They were usually so brilliant. Integra knelt down to sweep his hair away from his face. She was surprised when he caught her wrists and said, _"No."_

"And why not?"

He ignored her query. _"When did you realize?"_

"Realize what?"

_"The roses."_

"I don't have an epic tale of Epiphany if that's what you're looking for." She tugged at her wrists yet he held them tight. "It was a nagging feeling. Care to enlighten me further?"

_Car je ne puis trouver parmi ces pâles roses_

_Une fleur qui ressemble à mon rouge idéal._

_"The roses,"_ he said, caressing her pulse points, _"were only ever roses. I chose them because they were red and they had thorns. They were meant to be a gift, to the one I held in the highest regard."_ He kissed her knuckles. _"One who would take them into her willing hands, even as she knew she was holding a glorified corpse."_

_On her head was a crown of roses._

He turned her wrists over and kissed her palms. His tongue traced the creases and she shivered.

_"My Integra. So beautiful. So brave. More than I will ever be."_

She sighed and leaned into him. "Where are you, you prat? Why weren't you here?"

 _"I was away fighting a battle of my own. Do forgive me."_ His nose nudged her hair. _"I smell blood on you."_

"Retribution later," she rebutted. "Now, why won't you let me see your eyes?"

He dropped her wrists, and at the same time evaporated.

"Alucard!"

The darkness undulated. The dreamscape was collapsing.

"Alucard!"

_"This is merely a dream, my Integra."_

Integra let out a half-laugh, half-sob. She had the strangest urge to burst into tears. "You wanker."

_"But dreams always find a way of making themselves relevant."_

"Sir Hellsing!"

Integra was jarred into wakefulness. She swallowed back the melancholy her dream had imparted her, her palms tingling with phantom kisses, and twisted around. Fuck, she could not see a thing without her glasses.

"Sir Hellsing! Are you alright?"

The hour was up, and the upstairs were clamorous.

"About bloody time." She squinted through the bars and could barely make out the open door, a lump passed out on the floor which she assumed was the guard, and the nervous figure that was tiptoeing over it. Wait. _"Dillon?"_

The boy jumped. "Sir Hellsing, thank God you're alright!" He hurried forward and fumbled with a ring of keys. "It's absolute bedlam up there, Sir! The knights—Mr. Dornez—I never knew you could do that with wires, Sir—"

"Dillon," Integra repeated, "where's Alucard?"

Even with poor eyesight she could see that the valet looked instantly stricken.

"I—that is—His Highness, Sir—he—"

"Dillon," she said with enormous effort to keep calm, "they said you'd gone with Alucard to hunt. If you're here then _where is he?"_

Dillon perspired. "We were in the forest, Sir. There—there was someone there, and His Highness—he told me to turn back! I didn't want to, Sir! But you know how he can be. He was very adamant about it!"

"You're telling me," Integra said, dropping several degrees, "that he's been missing in the forest for _hours?"_

"He wanted to see to your safety, Sir!" Dillon entreated. "I could tell! Then I saw you get arrested, so I went to get Mr. Dornez. He'd been on his way here with the other knights—"

Integra wanted to bang her head against the bars. Instead she took a deep, fortifying breath. "Just get me out of here."

The valet fumbled harder with the keys.

"Having trouble?" another voice said.

Integra leapt up. "Walter!"

Walter bowed, none the worse for wear except for a smattering of blood on the sleeve of his right arm. "My lady. My deepest apologies for the delay." To Dillon, he chided, "You still haven't gotten her out? Tsk. I shall have to teach you the basics." He stretched his wires. "Heads down."

They ducked.

The wires slashed at the bars diagonally, chopping them into halves. Integra held up her shackled hands and in a blink the restraints were reduced to scraps of metal without a single mark on her. She flexed her wrists and strode out.

Dillon stood agape. "That was bloody amazing."

Throughout this, Walter was balancing on his left arm Integra's coat, her sabre and her pistol in a neat pile, and on top of them a new pair of glasses. "Oh, good. I had a feeling you would need a pair. Here you go."

"Thank you." Integra put them on, then her coat and weapons accordingly. She fished out a cigar, which the butler lit with a smirk.

"The knights?"

"Engaged. It shan't take long."

"The Queen?"

"Barricaded herself in her quarters. Should we smoke her out?"

"No, let her piss herself." Integra exhaled. "Walter, I'm going to go find Alucard."

"Very well, my lady."

"Dillon, you're leading me."

"Y-yessir!"

Sir Integral Fairbrook Wingates Hellsing drew her sabre. She pushed her glasses up her nose with its tip, and it was a hazard to say which was more lethal, the blade or the corners of her smile. "Tonight, we clean house."

xx

xx

The man had very long hair. His wife liked to braid it for him. Every evening after dinner, he took a smoke break outside their little cottage, slouched on a log, his braid slung over his neck as a makeshift pashmina. He filled his lungs with the smoke of his cheap cigarette and watched the clouds sail past. The moon hung in the background, gibbous and reddish.

"Weird shit goes down under a moon like this..."

He was correct. When he lowered his gaze to the line of trees at the periphery of their humble abode he nearly ate his cigarette.

_"Putain de merde!"_

The hellhound lounging in front of the trees perked its ears.

"Not you again!"

It wagged its tail.

"I told her it would be like this. Feed a motherfucker once and from then on he thinks this is his personal restaurant. Go away. Shoo. _Pschtt._ No scraps for you."

The oversized dog sniffed in indignation. It got up and moved to the side, revealing what it had brought them.

The man dropped his jaw. His cigarette fell. Then he slapped his hands to his face.

"Ah fuck. Fuck. No fucking way." He opened his hands a peep and shut them quickly. He pinched the bridge of his nose. " _Non, non, non, non._ Other animals bring twigs or bugs or mice or shiny shit. Why can't you do the same?" he begged. "Do we look like the undertaker to you? Do we?"

He could have sworn the dog was sniggering.

The door of the cottage opened. "What are you on about out there Pi— _eeeeeeeek!"_

_"M-mes oreilles..."_

Strange things did happen under a moon like this.

A half-alive prince in the middle of the woods was one of them.

xx

xx

xx

xx

* * *

 

  1. TRANSLATIONS



Poem in the middle: excerpt from Charles Baudelaire's "L'Idéal," _Les Fleurs du mal._ Translation by William Aggeler.

For I cannot find among those pale roses / A flower that is like my red ideal.

Putain de merde - Fucking shit

Pschtt - Shoo

Mes oreilles - My ears

  1. NOTES



I speak not one lick of French. Thank you Google.

I just...uh...*shifty eyes* really like torturing Alucard, okay? *hides*

And as if payback, this chapter was painful to write—literally! I had an ongoing headache that refused to abate even after many pills. But sheer determination rules, so here we are. Love, love all of you. You guys are the absolute best. They say April is the cruelest month, and in a way I agree wholeheartedly, but I hope that your April is as beautiful and flowery as it's meant to be.


	13. XII

xx

**12**

xx

"Oh my God, Pip, do you think he's...dead?"

"He sure fucking looks like it."

"Language!"

_Loud._

_And rude._

"Unbelievable. There's a pulse. It's...real slow, though."

"Oh God, Pip...his eyes!"

_Ruined._

"Merde. How the fuck are you alive, man?"

_That's right. I should be dead. Ah, when did this body of mine become a mere clumsy shell?_

It was sundown, and the shadows were in an uproar. They twisted and rippled as a reflection of his mental and physical state, angry, vengeful, sanguineous. They mapped out his surroundings. The trees. The man and the woman. The hellhound. Aware of the curdling darkness, it whined in submission.

"Let's move him inside."

"Do we have to?" A pause. A resigned sigh. "Fine. Poor bastard deserves someone at his deathbed."

Deathbed. He had had a foot in it for a long, long while.

"Okay, take his feet...up we go...wait, wait, wait, hold up! Not you too, shitty _chien!_ Stay!"

Life.

Death.

Now, it matters not.

xx

xx

Her smoke coiling in the air, Integra strode through the castle, stepping over bodies without a care in the world. Dillon had ran ahead to prepare the horses. Walter was flanking her.

She had been informed that a portion of the royal army was holding the right wing of the castle along with the Queen. The rest were engaged outside. The hall was in shambles. Her eyes ran over the gouge marks in the upholstery, the chandelier that had exploded and spewed its crystals all over the marble floor, the dust shimmering in the slant of twilight. She stopped and took it in. She felt that this confusion, this disorder, was what it always had been.

"My lady?"

She paid attention to the portrait over the dais. Large and gilded, a glorified likeness of the royals.

And yet, in its golden frame, no prince.

"In the end it was worth..."

She removed the cigar and tapped its ashes to the floor.

"Nothing. Nothing at all."

Walter was concerned. "Are you alright, Integra?"

Integra blinked. She turned to him and smiled, and if it was a sad little smile, the butler was wise enough not to say anything. "Why wouldn't I be?" And with that, the spell was broken. She shuttered her face. "Walter, stay here and aid the other knights."

"My lady, with all due respect, it is nightfall. That boy is not going to be any use against the beasts in the forest. I must insist on accompanying you."

"Sir Hellsing!" someone called urgently then, running toward them from one of the side chambers. It was Sir Islands, his top hat askew and Sir Penwood, harrowed and dabbing at his forehead with his handkerchief. "And Walter! Thank God! Thank God!"

"Sirs. Is there a problem?" Other than the one they were having right now? Honestly, at this point the universe could have imploded and Integra would not have batted an eyelash.

"The outside! It's—"

"Sir Hellsing," Islands said, "this is bedlam. Even with Walter, we were outnumbered from the beginning. I cannot afford to lose any more men. Where is His Highness? In this battle with the usurpers, the only thing that will break their morale is his presence."

"He's—he's not truly dead, is he?" Penwood stammered.

"He is not," she said. Her tone was final. "I will find him. In the meantime, I won't hold it against you if you choose to act on your best interests." She continued on. "I'm going."

"That's the problem! The outside, it's—well, you'll have to see for yourself."

Integra stood in front of the grand doors, her hands on the handles. In a deceptively calm voice she asked, "The outside, Sir Penwood?"

_(And in another story, Pandora asked, should I or should I not open this box?)_

Penwood and Islands took a step back as Walter took a step up, his wires tense between his fingers.

Biting her lip, Integra pushed the doors open.

PANDEMONIUM

1\. the capital of Hell in Milton's _Paradise Lost_

2\. the infernal regions : hell

3\. a wild uproar : tumult

Pandemonium.

Integra gaped. "Holy fucking—"

"—shit," Walter finished.

"God Almighty!" Sir Penwood yelled, just as a gargoyle swooped down. It was decapitated before it reached them, and its head landed at their feet with a splat.

"Sirs, I'll take care of this. Please, go back inside," Integra said, shoving the ashen men into the building and closing the doors shut. Then slowly, she faced the grounds.

"Well, Walter. It seems you don't need to worry about me going off in the forest." She flung her cigar at a nearby wraith, whereupon it disappeared down the creature's hood and burst into flames. "Because its _entire fucking population_ is no longer there!"

The forest must have had flipped itself upside down and emptied its inhabitants into the castle grounds, for the entire surface of the once-immaculate front was overrun by all manner of nocturnal beasts. Their orbs, varying in shades of red and orange and yellow, zeroed in on the hunters. Around them, soldiers had abandoned sides and were collectively fending off the creatures. Screams, human and inhuman, filled the air.

Integra fired her pistol in rapid succession at the motley and felled a supernatural target each time. That was the least of her concerns, though. "When did this happen?"

"The sun was setting when we arrived." Walter released a wave of wires. "They must have come out as soon as it went under."

"But _why?"_

He grimaced. "It's because _he_ isn't here. The proverbial sum, the counterweight, the zenith of monstrosity."

Integra's lips thinned. She commenced walking. "Cover me."

"There is a balance," the old man said, as he followed with his wires forming a dome over them, "to everything. Light and dark. Life and death. Boon and bane. The purge so many years ago—it was a counterbalance to the convergence of monstrosity in the very heart of the kingdom. As he matured, they came crawling back—for what better place for monsters to thrive than a realm ruled by one?"

"Stop talking about him like that," Integra snapped.

Walter gave her a pitying glance. "Integra, I too, am fond of the young man you have named 'Alucard.' But don't tell me you're in denial of his true nature. Before 'Alucard,' there is the nameless prince, the one they call 'Dracula.'"

_Son of the dragon, son of the Devil._

"When you find him, what will you do?"

Integra did not answer. Her platinum curls swayed in the clammy breeze. Clouds with dark linings, the vestiges of the day's snowstorm, floated past the blood red horizon.

Sunsets had always reminded her of his eyes.

She regarded the creatures swarming all over the place. The ones closest to them were watching her every move and doing nothing else. "They aren't attacking us."

Walter catered to her avoidance. "I rather believe they aren't attacking _you,_ my lady."

The implication was a headache.

Upon reaching the gates, she was surprised to see Tweedle-dee and Tweedle-dum still at their posts, looking ill but alive. They snapped up straight at her approach. "Sir Hellsing!"

"I see you two are in one piece."

"Er, yes," one said, appearing unsure about that fact himself. "We've no idea why, Sir. They don't attack us. But they don't let us go anywhere else, either."

"I'm going to be sick," the other complained.

The sound of hooves announced Dillon's arrival. He was frazzled yet also unscathed. He held up two lanterns. "R-ready, Sir."

"Good." Integra paused, and rounded on Walter. "I'm going to answer your question."

He inclined his head.

"What will I do?" She glared at him. "Counterbalance? Nameless prince? Dracula? What utter shite," she spat. "He's Alucard. _My_ Alucard. And if he is those things that you blathered about, then I'm going to make him fix this. I'm going to kick his sorry ass, and I'm going to bring him home." She closed her eyes briefly. " _Home,_ Walter."

Walter could not help but smile. "I only await your return, my lady."

Integra replicated the smile wearily. No promises.

She took her lantern and swung herself on a horse. "Kill as many as you can, but focus on getting the others to safety, first. We don't need a larger mess than the one we already have."

"Understood."

"As for you two," she said to the gatekeepers, "you are relieved from duty. Follow Walter back to the castle and replenish yourselves." Integra raised a brow at their brightening expressions. "I confess myself curious. Why are you so amenable to my orders? I have no hold over you, and His Highness is absent."

"Yes, but," Tweedle-dee or dum hesitated. "You're going to find him, aren't you? He's coming back. And when he does…these things will go away."

"Or that's what the rumors say," Tweedle-dum or dee added earnestly.

Integra rubbed a temple. "And these rumors, they don't bother you?"

They shrugged. "Better one scary prince than thousands of these monsters, Sir."

The corners of her mouth twitched. She took the reins and led her horse to the direction of the forest entrance.

"Let's go."

The valorous knight and the hapless valet set a brisk pace into the woods, seen off by a loyal butler and two witless gatekeepers. Had the knight been paying attention, she would have noticed a fourth person under a tree she had just ran past; his face sporting a wide grin, his bespectacled gaze appraising, a cross bouncing on his chest. Yet she was distracted by the stars that were flecking the sky. She tilted her head toward the zenith.

_"Just as you will fall after me, I will fall after you."_

"Straight into hell."

Dillon looked behind him nervously. "Did you say something, Sir?"

_"We'll run them out of their thrones. We'll make ourselves a paradox."_

She was starting to wonder if the powers that be had taken her words four years ago a bit too literally.

"Damn it all to hell if that is the case," Integra growled.

Back at the gates, Tweedle-dee or dum sighed. "Besides, the prince isn't so bad when you think about Sir Hellsing."

Walter snorted.

xx

xx

The blue hue of twilight quickly bled into black.

An uninhabited forest, Integra discovered, was in a way more intimidating than an inhabited one. Its emptiness conveyed the irrevocable condemnation that life could not be sustained in its depths. She almost preferred an onslaught of damned beasts to this. The sole reprieve from the cage of nothingness the trees comprised was the light from their lanterns.

She brushed aside a low-hanging branch. Ahead of her, Dillon was describing the events leading up to his separation from the prince.

"It was a man's voice, Sir, though I couldn't hear it clearly. I think he may have been reciting something...such as a Bible verse..."

"A priest." Integra ground her teeth. "The thirteenth. I knew it was too quiet."

"Sir," Dillon ventured, "if...if there had been a fight, then shouldn't..." He gulped. "Wouldn't this mean..."

"Don't finish that sentence."

Silence fell. Integra refused to entertain any uncertainties.

The riders walked further into the woods, where the trail became laden with snow. Nearly an hour into the search, Dillon cried out. "I think we're nearly there, Sir! There must be a clearing up there. I'll go and see if—"

The valet did not have a chance to finish.

His horse had taken a few steps into the outskirts of the clearing when it gave a great neigh of terror and reared, pitching Dillon from its back.

Integra, clinging to her reins and attempting to control her own affected horse, could only watch helplessly as Dillon shouted in pain and his horse turned tail and galloped away. "Easy, easy! Dillon! Are you hurt?"

"L-leg's b-broken...something up there's s-scared her badly..."

As soon as she settled her horse, Integra jumped down and knelt beside him. "How bad is it?"

"I'll m-manage, Sir." The boy gave her a brave smile. "I can take care of this. Please, go to the clearing and—and see if—"

In what was the worst day of her life, Integra felt as if she had the weight of the world on her shoulders as she stood, without argument, and trudged into the clearing. She did not know what she was expecting. Alucard sitting in the snow, unable to move due to an injury of his own? Looking up at her with that stupid smirk of his as she entered? An offhand remark on her punctuality? A lewd one or two?

 _Not_ this.

Not _this._

Integra slid a hand down her face. "Not fucking this."

"Sir Hellsing! Is everything alright?"

She circled the dead stallion, unflinching at the monument of death, and made her way to the opposite side where a glint of metal had caught her eye.

His sword.

She lifted it up and stabbed it into the ground.

"Sir Hellsing?"

The small pool of light from her lantern illuminated the site of battle and reflected off another discarded weapon, a bayonet. She picked it up and studied it. Silver. She threw it down.

She moved to the large puddle of blood that had soaked through the snow and sank next to it. She grabbed a fistful of the red slush and squeezed.

Then she noticed the line of blood leading from the puddle.

Integra leapt up.

Dillon was clumsily setting his leg with sticks and his scarf when she returned. His face fell at her expression. "He's not—"

"Dillon," Integra said quietly, "I want you to take my horse, turn back and get your leg fixed."

The valet stared at her in horror. "I cannot, Sir Hellsing! It was one thing to leave His Highness behind, but now you as well? You can't expect me to leave you alone in a forest at night. On foot. In winter! I'm timid but not stupid or even a coward, Sir!"

"And yet you have a broken leg, which will slow us down in whichever way, and you will have to contend with my wrath if you don't comply with my orders," Integra said coolly. "I assure you, Dillon, that the consequences will be dire should that come to pass." After a meaningful pause, she smiled reassuringly. "I promised I would find him and I will. I never break my promises."

The boy's shoulders were stiff with mutiny, yet in the prolonged silence they slumped, defeated, and Integra wordlessly helped him to his feet and on horseback. Dillon bowed his head. "No wonder my lord loves you so, Sir," he said. "You are truly an empress among queens."

Integra scowled. "None of that. Off you go."

With his departure, the forest was very dark and very still.

The knight began to follow the trail of blood.

She did not feel the cold. She was numb.

xx

xx

The woman was named after a Roman goddess. Her surname meant victory. More than once people had remarked it was too grandiose an appellation for her, and they might have been right. Her hair was a sunny yellow, her eyes a cornflower blue, and her cheeks dimpled. She simply looked too wholesome to be anything other than a blushing bride in a charming little cottage.

Looks can be deceiving.

But that was a story for another time.

She had a penchant for mustering up compassion in the most inopportune circumstances. Like when she had fed the hellhound dinner scraps the other day. "No, Mignonette, you do not feed a hellhound scraps. They eat _souls_ for a living, remember?" her husband had said. Unfortunately, he had married one of the most stubborn women in the realm, second only to a certain knight, and she had merely scratched the dog on its many-eyed head and said, "But Pip, why would the poor thing be here if he isn't starving?"

"To devour our unsuspecting souls?" Pip had pointed out. She had gone on feeding it anyway.

Which had developed into their current predicament.

"Right. So. This is supposed to be our cozy honeymoon cottage," her husband said.

"Uh-huh," she said cheerfully.

"Our retreat from _le monde_ and all its complications."

"Yep."

"A place for just the two of us. _Alone_ ," he stressed.

"Mmm."

"Tell me again, then, how," Pip Bernadotte waved at the unconscious man on their spare bed and the sheep-sized dog on the floor, "this came to be?"

"For goodness' sake, Pip, you helped me carry them in here." Seras Victoria rolled her eyes.

"Correction. I helped carry _Blanche Neige_ here. Not the mongrel, too."

Said mongrel opened three orbs and thumped its tail.

"Blanche Neige? Is that what you're calling him?" Seras peered closely at their patient. "Hmm. He really is rather pale, isn't he?"

"Or _la belle au bois dormant_ , I'm not picky." Pip was disgruntled that their little life was interrupted, and that his wife was studying another man's body, but he was not _that_ shallow. He dragged a stool and sat beside Seras. "I still can't believe he isn't dead. I mean, who still breathes looking like that? It's a bloody miracle."

"Exactly why we need to help him," Seras said determinedly. "The salve's cooled. Help me bandage him up."

Pip adjusted the man as Seras plastered healing salve on his sternum and dressed it in gauze, crossing her fingers that her meager medical skills would suffice. She was even less confident about his optical injury and decided to let it be for the time being. When she tried next to remove the red cravat around his hand however, the body, which had been completely immobile until then, reacted. The hand curled into a fist and spasmed as shadows elongated and streaked up the walls.

"Eek! Okay." Seras held up her hands in surrender. "I won't touch it."

" _Mon Dieu_." Pip stared. "What the fuck was that?"

"He might not—" She bit her lip. "Not be entirely normal, I think."

"You think? What gave it away, the shadows that shot across our ceiling a few seconds ago?"

"Other than that." Seras pointed at an inconsequential cut on the man's arm. Before their eyes it shrunk, and then closed.

"Merde." Pip stuck a cigarette in his mouth. He did not light it, because she hated when he smoked indoors, but it was better than nothing. "What have we gotten ourselves into, ma chère?"

They always did seem to have the worst luck.

xx

xx

xx

xx

* * *

 

NOTES

Chien - Dog

Le monde - The world

Blanche Neige - Snow White

La belle au bois dormant - Sleeping Beauty

Mon Dieu - My God

"Pandemonium" is defined by Merriam-Webster.

Filler-y chapter with a distinct lack of Alucard, I should admit, but bear with me. My muse has been peculiarly canon-compliant these days and has, against my better judgment, been brainstorming a new, canon-complaint AxI fic. It's very frustrating, since I don't plan to start a new story until SW is finished. Hmm. Let's see how it goes.

I've always had this headcanon of Pip being a potty mouth and I think it's because he has the same voice actor as Sanji in _One Piece_ and Sanji is a potty mouth, not to mention their characters are quite similar, so...

When I write Integra, I listen to "Valor - In Courage and Gallantry," from the _Bayonetta 2_ Original Soundtrack. Only the best for our queen!

If I'm rambling, it's because I had coffee. It's a terrible influence on me.

Thank you, thank you everyone. Your responses are lovelier than cherry blossoms in spring. Don't think I take them lightly, because I take them to heart. It's just that I become very self-conscious and fret a lot if I attempt to reply to anything other than direct questions. I always await you.


	14. XIII

xx

**13**

xx

She found his cloak.

Initially she had taken aim, thinking it a stray beast, but when recognized the sable fur she let her pistol slip from her hand and land in the snow. She remembered kneeling down. She remembered pulling the garment up her shuddering frame. It was matted with snow and blood and there was so much of it, so much blood. She buried her face into it. She stayed like that for a long, long while and remembered little else.

At length she forced her legs to move. She picked up her gun, wrapped the fur around her, entered parts of the forest few others had braved. She cursed his name exactly twenty-eight times before her lips succumbed to the same numbness that had set into her heart, her fingers and toes.

And yet, like all ice, she broke.

A small puddle of blood marked the end of the trail that had been steadily growing fainter and fainter.

Purely because no one was around, Integra allowed herself a full minute to tear up in frustration. A drop escaped and fell into the redness. Then she mentally slapped herself and, sidestepping the puddle, she spread the cloak on the ground, sat down on it, uncovered a pile of leaves and struck a match.

She lit her last cigar on the crackling flames and backed into a tree.

Integra stared.

He was like fire. Which would make no sense, for he normally was cold to the touch. But he was like fire, intoxicating and unbridled and dangerous to behold. Yet she could hold him, she could kiss him, and her hands and lips would remain unblistered and merely ache in the most tantalizing ways.

"I am a child of snow but I will burn for you," he had said. "You'll be my Nero, plucking your lyre and singing as I make ashes out of the world."

"I am a terrible singer," she had said, and as always, he had laughed.

She had been angry, so very angry, when Walter had insinuated that she was in denial of him because, hah! Denial? There was nothing veiled about her thoughts concerning him.

He was her beauty and her rose and she had his heart in her hands.

He was a fake and a thorn and he had hers in his.

They were a study in chiaroscuro. Where she was dark he was light, vice versa. For as long as she had known him, he had been there when she had needed him most, and in the red of his eyes where others perceived only malice, she found adoration in such depth that sometimes she felt out of breath. And for years and years she had tried to reciprocate by being his knight, by bringing to him his birthright as he had hers.

It did not matter now, did it, when everything was in shambles, and the two of them were once more the lost children of fairy tales whom the fates had given too much too early?

"So you bastard, give me a break," Integra said out loud. "Are you gloating about how miserable I am without you? Fucking incorrigible needy wretch. I should have never brought you tea. Maybe if I had dashed away your expectations years ago, by never returning to that room, I could have been spared all this shit."

She laughed.

"Then again, we would have simply had another chance at another time."

She held her cigar loosely and when the half of it greyed, she tossed it into the fire. Integra removed her glasses and curled into the sable cloak, unbothered by its coppery scent.

"If you give me a hint, I'll spare you the worst," she whispered, and her eyes closed.

_"Until she called my name_

_I was but_

_One movement."_

Her dream this time was filled with red and black. She was on warm ground, in the same position in which she had fallen asleep. Beyond, she could see the outline of a blazing city. He was somewhere above her, sitting near her head, a hand tangled in her hair. When she stirred his enunciation became contoured. He purred his words as if he was making love with his tongue.

_"When she called my name_

_I went to her_

_And became a rose."_

"Alucard?"

"My Faerie Queene." His dulcet voice floated down to her ear.

"You are in so much trouble," she told him.

His throaty chuckles saturated the air. "Though I am sure whatever you have in store for me will put the Roman conflagration to shame, let us simply enjoy what little time we have together in this charming dream world of ours."

"Only you would call an inferno charming." She would have risen but her limbs felt like lead. Even in dream she was exhausted. "A bit overboard, don't you think?"

"No, it's just right." He stroked her nape. "The structure is burning, my valorous knight. Despite your best intentions it has run its course."

Integra took a slow, careful look at the wasteland, this perdition he had crafted, as much as she could from her position. The flames were reddish black and towered over them, yet posed no threat. She wondered whom they had cremated.

"I knew you would appreciate the ambience."

"Beauty in destruction," she murmured.

"As there is in you, my magnificent regina."

"Flatterer." She reached out, found his arm and tugged, indicating that she wanted him closer, and for once he obliged without comment. He lay down and clutched her to him. Sensing his tiredness, she burrowed into his shirt and breathed over his heart.

"Tell me where you are so we can put an end to this mess."

When he failed to answer, Integra started to remove herself from his embrace so she could look up at his face. Suddenly she very much desired to see his eyes.

He held onto her tightly. "So eager to leave me, my ideal."

"I believe you mean to find you, you dolt. Isn't that what you said? This is merely a dream?" she mocked. "I won't waste any more time here if I can just throttle you in reality. And for God's sake, stop it with these ridiculous names."

He did not react to her blatant words, which stoked the steadily growing feeling of unease in the pit of her stomach. She _needed_ to see his eyes. Yet he would not budge.

"Integra," he said finally. "Do you wish to find me, truly?"

If she could she would have stared at him. "What kind of question is that?"

"Do you wish my continued presence in your life?"

"Are you drunk?" Integra demanded. "What's brought this on? Don't tell me you're so fearful of my wrath that you're resorting to this."

He did laugh lightly, but it was with a tinge of bitterness. Mouth hovering over her hair, he stated, "The structure has burned. Nothing will be the same."

Integra closed her eyes and sighed in muted agreement.

He was quiet for a while. She waited.

Then he spoke.

"My existence has always been a conundrum, and my perception of my existence also a conundrum. Simultaneously greedy and nihilistic about it all. How did that priest put it? Ah, yes. A void. Both empty and wanting. Had I been left to my own devices I would have undoubtedly destroyed myself long since.

"But then you were there. You pulled back the curtains. You came in with the sun. So excruciatingly painful. How I hated you in that instant! And it would have been so easy if it were only that, if you had run away like the others had. Left that peculiar boy with his peculiar weakness on the floor in agony and loathing. But you didn't. You had to stay. You had to help. You had to insist.

"I am a fucking incorrigible needy wretch whom you should never have brought tea. You should have dashed away my expectations. You should have never returned to that room. Yet instead you made it worse. You gave me a name that was more wordplay than anything, and with that paltry detail you sealed our fate. You bound me to you, more intimately than parent and offspring because it was by choice."

The fire raged in the background, consuming all they knew, yet it did not touch them for they were to be its survivors. Integra lay still and silent as if in slumber but she drank every word.

He kissed her crown.

"I will sooner rip apart the gates of heaven and hell than to part with you. But if _you_ wish it, Integra. If it is _your_ will that commands it, I will obey. If you wish my pathetic existence to be erased from your glory, I will prostrate myself at your feet for it is you, it has always been you, who holds the stake."

She opened her eyes.

Not an ounce of emotion was on Integra's face when she pushed his arms away and shoved him onto his back. This time, he did not stop her when she raked his hair aside.

His eyes were whole, they were crimson and they were shedding _tears of blood._

Her fingers shook just slightly.

He, too, was expressionless. Then she straddled him, and his pupils dilated and he bared his teeth. They were sharper than she could ever recall them to be. Briefly Integra wondered whether they were awake or asleep, if this world was true or false, if there was a boundary at all; she decided it did not matter. Her pale locks fell to either side of his face as she leaned in, her fingers sliding up his cheeks, and the flow of blood broke apart and ran over her knuckles.

He shivered.

She looked in closely. "You say a dream is merely a dream, but we both know that for us it isn't."

He let out a hiss, perhaps in affirmation, perhaps in desire.

"That winter day, even if I could rewind it, the outcome would be the same."

"Integra," he moaned.

She pressed her forehead against his. "What are you afraid of, Alucard? That when this dream is over we will run our course, as this vapid little kingdom has done? That when I find you, an illusion will be shattered, and all you will be is a monster with no title? You seem to be forgetting your own words so let me remind you." Her nails left crescents on his skin. "You are right. I bound you to me. You. _Alucard._ Whatever you were before was overwritten the moment I named you. And if you think that I will _ever_ let you go, and with a method so merciful as a stake in your heart," she seethed, "I will make you pray that you and I had never even met."

"Not likely," Alucard said, and he crushed her to him.

It was more a war than a kiss, tongues and teeth their weapons as each tried to outdo the other with nips and licks and blood and saliva. She nicked her lip. She tasted him and he tasted her and Alucard rued this non-reality because her blood, oh, her blood was the sweetest nectar. Empires would fall for that sweetness.

The fire was dissipating. In its stead was a lucid dawn.

"You are mine."

Alucard smirked. "You mean you are mine."

"No, you are mine," Integra said stubbornly.

"I am yours," Alucard agreed. "And you are...?"

He could hear the smile in her exasperated sigh. "I am yours."

"My Integra."

Integra sat up under the blue hour encroaching on their dreamscape. She licked at her cut and discovered the blood there to be oddly sweet, and minutely stinging. She would wake soon. "Tell me where you are."

Alucard gazed at her mouth. "I'm not sure. Forests tend to be the same in every direction."

She gave him a humorless look. "Do you want me to stake you?"

"Why hold back? It's not as if I can die in a dream." He chuckled when her hands twitched. "It's a cottage, my Integra. In the middle of the woods."

"Cottage. In the middle of the woods. Very helpful."

"I'm never far. In fact, you've had something of mine even before we'd met. It's served you well once, has it not? Why don't you try that?"

"Bloody riddler," Integra grumbled. She rolled off him and got to her feet.

Alucard caught her wrist. "Integra, when you see me..." He suddenly appeared vulnerable. "I may not...be myself."

Integra held his leaking eyes, remembered his reticence to let her view them earlier. She wished, desperately, that her intuition was wrong, that it was mere conjecture. She smiled thinly. "I've seen you in every way. You can't surprise me."

His own smile was fixed.

She stepped back. He let her.

_As I have called his name_

_Upon this color, this scent_

_Someone, call mine._

_I wish to go to him_

_And become his flower._

_We all_

_Wish to be something._

_You to me, I to you_

_An inerasable meaning._

Her campfire was nearly extinguished.

In the light of the not quite morning, not quite night she rose, ethereal despite her fatigue. Her bottom lip was swollen. She had bitten it in sleep. She traced it with her tongue.

It tasted oddly sweet.

She put her glasses on and her eyes, lustrous blue diamonds, focused. She sorted out the kinks in her muscles, covered the fire with snow and then searched the inside of her coat for something she had been carrying for a long time.

The pouch of rose petals.

_"It's served you well once, has it not?"_

Integra had had many roses come and go in her life. When their colors faded she had them scattered around the yard, too busy to make proper potpourris. But this one became a habit. This one was the first. The primordial rose.

Most of it had been reduced to black dust. There were still, however, a few petals intact. She spilled them into her palm.

"Please work," Integra whispered, and blew.

It was a windless day.

Yet they floated. They twirled. They danced.

She followed. She left the cloak.

xx

xx

Sometimes Seras cooked, sometimes Pip did. Neither was great at cooking; at least one dish a day would spark an argument ("Potatoes with this sauce? Really?" "Potatoes go with everything, Mignonette." "No they don't.") and they did not always have a hearty meal, but they did it with love and that was enough to turn a blind eye if the soufflé fell flat.

In Pip's case, literally.

Today's breakfast was Seras' turn. It was porridge. Like yesterday. And the day before. Today was different, though. They had a guest. She peered into a small sack of oats, trying to estimate the right amount for three people, and ended up dumping the entire lot.

"Are we hosting an army?" Pip asked, shuffling into the kitchen, his auburn braid askew.

"Oh no. Is it too much?" She glanced worriedly at the pot. "Do you think the dog will eat porridge?"

"You mean the dog that isn't really a dog but is actually a demon? Mignonette, we've been over this," Pip groaned. He was dead tired. He had been unable to be at ease with the knowledge that someone who may or may not be human was in the next room. Meanwhile, Seras had slept soundly. The woman had the self-preservation skills of a kitten.

"He only looks scary, Pip. He's a good dog or else he wouldn't have helped that man find his way here."

"Yeah, real fortunate," Pip muttered. "For all we know, this could be an elaborate plot to level our house before dragging us both down to hell."

"You and your worst case scenarios." Seras skipped over to where her husband was sulking and flicked his nose. "Relax. They don't mean us harm."

Pip rubbed his nose. "And how do you know that?"

She pointed to her head and winked. "Instinct!"

He would have snorted, but Pip felt his tension ebb despite himself. He knew how scary a woman's intuition could be and put stock in the way his wife flitted around, humming a cheery tune, a ray of sunshine. It pushed his mind away from the proverbial elephant and to…other things. He came up behind Seras and snaked his arms around her. " _Je vois._ Any other instinct you might be willing to share?"

Seras smacked him with her tasting spoon over her shoulder. "Quit!"

"Damn, woman! You got porridge in my hair!"

"That's what you get for getting frisky while I'm making one," she admonished. "Go wash it off and draw some water while you're at it. The kettle's empty."

" _Petite mégère._ " He kissed her cheek and she giggled. "Fine. Don't miss me too much while I'm out there."

Pip grabbed a bucket, a cigarette and a box of matches. He put the cigarette in his mouth, intent on lighting it outside so the combination of winter air and tobacco smoke would sort him out. He opened the door and his good eye blinked at the brightness.

And he nearly ate his cigarette. Again.

"FUCKING HELL!" He dropped the bucket.

"PIP! What on—" Seras stopped. "Oh. You're awake!"

He was indeed.

Their guest had been standing with his back toward the cottage door. Now he shifted, revealing a side of his face, its upper half obscured with ebony hair and white gauze.

It was one thing to see him supine in bed at night, quite another to see him up and about in the day. His bandaged, bloodstained, towering figure seemed to distort the dimensions of their yard, as though he was its gravitational center. Pip moved to shield Seras without realizing. Shit, shit, shit, shit. This man was dangerous. _Dangerous_. He could feel it.

_He doesn't mean us harm...he doesn't mean us harm..._

"So. La belle au bois dormant has awoken." He lit his cigarette. Lord knows he needed to be sorted out _now_. "Hey, big guy. Warn a person, okay?"

Seras elbowed him. "You're just right on time, mister," she greeted cheerily. "Breakfast is almost ready. How are you feeling?"

The man was smiling, yet for some reason it appeared lethal. He spoke, and his voice was deep and sibilant, coming forth from the abyss. "Are you the hosts of this quaint establishment?"

"You make it sound like we're running an inn. We're not, by the way." Pip crossed his arms. "Pip Bernadotte and Seras Victoria. We saved you from dying of blood loss and freezing your ass off."

"Pip, really," Seras gritted. To their guest she chirped, "We didn't even hear you get up."

"You two were being quite loud. You're liable to wake the dead." His smile took on a peculiar edge with those words. "Some may say it's suicidal, to let your guards down thus while housing a stranger and a demon hound."

"Yeah, well, you end up doing weird shit when you decide to live in a forest, apparently," Pip said under his breath. Seras elbowed him again.

"You should come inside, mister," Seras said. "You're still injured and we need to replace your bandages. You're probably hungry, so if you'll wait a bit I'll have the table set."

The man did not respond. Then he turned fully to them and angled his head, an image of contemplation, and as callous as it was Pip was glad they could not see his eyes because whatever their color, he was certain that they would be those of a predator who was weighing what to do with his potential next meals.

The nerve of him. They saved his life. Why did they have to take this crap?

Oh, right. Shadows. Crazy healing powers. Loyal hellhound.

_He doesn't mean us harm...he doesn't mean us harm..._

"You have my thanks," the man said finally. "I dislike being in debt; I will recompense you for your hospitality. However." He pivoted and began to walk toward the woods. "I must be going."

"Wait, what?" Seras squeezed past Pip and ran up to him. "You're leaving? You're not in any condition to go anywhere!"

"I have wasted enough time as it is. My condition should be of no concern to you."

"Pardon me, but I was the one who plastered you up. It sure is my concern," Seras argued, bridling. "I might not be a doctor but I know you shouldn't be moving at all! And mister, you're blind. How are you supposed to get to wherever you're going when you _can't see?"_

"I'll manage," he said.

"No." Seras marched forward and blocked his path. "I won't let you. You say you'll recompense us? I say I'll only consider our debt collected when you've at least healed that hole in your chest."

He halted. "How amusing," he drew out. "Another headstrong type."

Seras stood her ground. "I won't let you leave in that state."

"I would commend your tenacity, yet I have little patience for those who insist on wasting my time." He gnarled his fingers. "It will be no trouble at all to tear you apart where you stand, girl."

She tensed.

The sound of a gun cocking caused them to start.

"Okay, that's enough." Pip aimed his pistol at the man's back with one hand, and in the other he gripped his cigarette as he blew smoke from his mouth. "Hey, _connard_. You can go fuck yourself for all I care." The green eye glared. Any trace of levity was gone from his tone. "But no one threatens ma chère and gets away with it."

Seras squeaked.

The tension surmounted.

Then suddenly from out of nowhere the hellhound appeared. It barked sharply.

The three of them jolted.

A moment later, the viciousness that had been consuming the man's visage vanished, and he let out a single, harsh laugh. "It seems I have no choice."

"Y-you'll stay?" Seras stammered.

"I have no choice," he repeated.

"Um, alright then! That's great! I'll...go see to breakfast..." Seras tiptoed her way back to her husband's side as he slowly withdrew his gun. "Pip, it's fine. Go and wash yourself..."

"Just one thing," Pip said, before crossing over and punching their guest in the face.

He staggered. Blood issued from his nose.

" _Oh—my—God_ , Pip!" Seras screeched. "He's a _patient!"_

"Like I said, no one threatens ma chère and gets away with it." Pip crushed his cigarette underfoot. "And it's not like anything's fatal to you, eh?"

The man said nothing.

"Pip, I know he's not very nice but he's hurt and blind, he's going to be like that! Mister, your nosebleed—" Seras turned, only to see the man already off, not into the woods but to the pile of logs where the hellhound was waiting for him. "Argh!"

"Let him be, Mignonette. The guy wants to be left alone."

"Yeah, because you punched him!"

"Can you blame me?" Pip lowered his voice. "I could tell you were scared, alright? Come on. Not even a peck on the cheek for your knight in shining armor?"

Seras huffed. "Oh, you." She did, however, smile and kiss his cheek. "Thank you for that, I guess." Then she frowned. "Do you smell that?"

"Fuck."

"Eeeeeek! My porridge!"

The little cottage erupted in hustle and bustle with the woman running into the kitchen and the man running to the well to fetch water. Light smoke wafted from the windows. Soon it was quiet.

Fire, blood, smoke, noise. Prerequisites to chaos.

Alucard pressed the hand wrapped in the cravat to his bleeding nose.

He sat, leaning into the pile of logs behind him, head bowed, legs bent, an arm draped over a knee. The hellhound nudged him and he scratched its ears before shooing it away. He thought the bandage around his eyes constricting. He tore it off and looked up, or he would have, at the hated sun.

It and his blindness were preventing him from retracing his steps to the castle.

To Integra.

He licked his lips and tasted nothing but his blood. Long ago, at his first death, he remembered being enticed by the red liquid that had gushed forth from the maid. He had been horrified then. Should the same opportunity present itself now, what would he do?

Was all blood as sweet as Integra's had been in his dream, or was hers unique?

Of course, what a silly question.

He heard the door open, and at the same time heavy, booted footsteps approach him. With his senses of sight and smell out of commission he could only surmise it was the Frenchman, come to seek further revenge, perhaps. Truly deplorable, to be essentially at the mercy of a bumbling country girl and her posturing husband. He sneered. "What, were you not satisfied with that punch?"

His senses of sight and smell were out of commission.

But his sense of hearing was not.

He heard it, the shuddering gasp.

Rough.

Feminine.

Familiar.

Alucard had his sense of touch. It felt the warmth of the hands that were wavering above his head until they streaked down and cupped his face. He felt the breath that was stirring his fringe until it capitulated and morphed into a kiss. He felt the tears. A drop landed on his lips. His sense of taste told him it was salty yet sweet.

He said her name. Softly, reverently.

_"Integra."_

xx

xx

xx

xx

* * *

 

Until I called his name

He was but

One movement.

When I called his name

He came to me

And became a flower.

As I have called his name

Upon this color, this scent

Someone, call mine.

I wish to go to him

And become his flower.

We all

Wish to be something.

You to me, I to you

An inerasable meaning.

\- "Flower" by Kim Chunsu. Translation by me.

xx

Je vois - I see

Petite mégère - Little shrew

Connard - Asshole

xx

_Thank you and love you all._


	15. XIV

xx

**14**

xx

"Integra."

"Damn you," she said. She sounded equal parts angry and broken. "How dare you do this to me."

Alucard covered the hands holding his face with his, turned to place a dry kiss in one and then the other. He wished, oh he wished, that he could see her, at the same time he did not. The look in her eyes as they beheld his wretched state would be unbearable. "I did warn you."

"After the amount of shit I had to go through because of you. This." Integra pulled away, her hands slipping from his and curling into fists at her sides. She hardly knew where to start, and the sight of his eyes, his once beautiful and brilliant eyes, _mangled_ —it threatened to destroy her composure all over again. She let out an anguished breath along with his name. " _Alucard_."

"I'm sorry," he said plaintively. His hands hung in the air, lost without her, before they dropped into the snow. His mouth curved into an empty smile. "If it makes you feel better, you were right. Always right. I am incorrigible, insufferable, any and all adjectives you have ever called me."

Her responding laugh was low and destitute. "Fuck you."

He did not even attempt a lewd comeback.

Integra closed her eyes, steadying herself. When she opened them within seconds, they were cold, and colder still as she knelt in the snow between his legs and examined him. He sat like a statue as she did. It was too painful to linger on his face so Integra lowered her gaze to his tattered shirt, parted to reveal the bandage around his chest where at the center there was a dark red blot. Her fingers smoothed out the gauze, careful not to jog the wound. "Did he do this? The thirteenth?"

"I was being arrogant. He was a regenerator."

"Bastard."

He did not know which was her subject, him or the priest. Probably both. Alucard shivered when her fingers trailed to the rest of his bare torso, tracing a discolorment that whitened under her blue scrutiny. "It's not healing because it's blessed silver?" she asked.

"It is, but slowly," he replied, voice rough at her prolonged touch.

Integra drew away, contemplating.

"He asked if you would be enough for me to find my way back." Alucard's smile became more pronounced. "He didn't know, did he, that my Integra does not wait. If I cannot come to her, she will simply come and drag me with her."

He moved then, his fingers wrapping around the sleeves of her coat, the long digits twisting into the fabric possessively.

"The same goes for me."

Alucard hauled her into his arms. Integra let him.

"We'll pull and push each other and make a battlefield out of our wills."

She kept silent.

He became more insistent. Perhaps desperate. His nose, now cleared up, nuzzled her hair, inhaling her perfume. She had smoked quite a while ago. Its odor was overpowered for once by her redolence of tea, of camellias and bergamot. He was drunk on her real, actual presence; his dreams simply did not do her justice.

Regrettably, he could also smell her blood and tears. He sobered. "I did not mean to cause you distress, my Integra. It was why I asked."

"Too late," she sniped.

"Integra," he pleaded.

A vindictive stretch of silence passed until at last, Integra sighed. She leaned into him limply, resting her forehead on his shoulder. His embrace was cold, barely warmer than the snow, yet she was so used to it that she preferred it to any other temperature. "You have a lot of fixing to do."

"Yes." His lips found her ear. "Judgment Day, my Integra."

"Yes, it's about time," she said. "Destroy them. Sweep the floor with the blood and bones of those who have conspired against you. Carve the heart out of the one who has done this to you." Her tone thinned into blades. " _Swear it_."

"I swear," he vowed hoarsely, her words fueling his lust. "They will beg for their lives. But enough about me. What about the ones who have wronged you?" Alucard ran his thumb over the cut on her cheek. "Who did this to you?"

"The Queen."

"Then I shall have to start by chopping her fingers off. One by one. And this?" His lips made their way down to her neck, where the swords of the royal guards had left shallow scratches when they blocked her. Alucard suppressed the growl rising from his depths. Her lovely face. Her lovely neck. Marked, and because he had not been there for her. He was such a fucking failure. A hand deftly untied her cravat and exposed her clavicles and additional cuts to the winter air. Integra made a noise in her throat but did not rebuke him; she was being very, very gracious and far more indulgent than he deserved. He endeavored to give back by kissing each and every irregularity on her skin. "Who did this?"

"I think Walter might have gotten to them first."

"Well, that was unfair of him. Will you be angry if I resurrected them and butchered them all over again?"

"You can try." Not unaffected by his ministrations, her short breaths condensed into wisps of mist. Alucard was now holding her by the shoulders underneath her coat, lavishing attention on a clavicle, his hair tickling her face. Integra upturned her lips. "Just leave some for me to shoot."

"Spoken as my true queen," Alucard chuckled, and laved her jugular notch.

Her head tilted back, and her bespectacled blue eyes reflected the sun. How coincidental. A sunny winter day. She had happened on a prince, his body and spirit battered and bloodied. They talked of vengeance and retribution, exchanged promises and kisses, and once again her cutting intuition alluded to the change that had befallen them, that vague notion that somehow, she had managed to tilt the world on its axis.

It appeared they had come full circle.

She moaned when his teeth grazed her flesh.

"I wish I could see you right now," Alucard whispered feverishly. "I wish I could see you in the sun as I worship you with my mouth. It's the only thing I can offer you, this meager pleasure, until this wound in my chest closes completely. Then I will be strong enough to lay waste on our enemies and bring you a true kingdom, my Integra." A bitter laugh escaped him. "Yet I must admit, I'd preferred to gaze upon their expressions of terror as I did."

A lesser woman might have been overcome by his words, but Integra simply said, "You will." Her train of thought was stationary on the teeth at her jugular.

"Will I? How? Does my Integra have a trick up her sleeve?" His tone was only slightly derisive. "Is she the Messiah to open my eyes?"

"Don't be blasphemous," she chided. "You will, and that's all you need to know at present."

 _He will_. Her eyes hardened. _I'll make sure of it._

Integra sensed his curiosity and wariness, yet he knew when not to push. The sun had risen higher, and in his resulting drowsiness Alucard pressed one last series of kisses to her other clavicle before he drooped. She combed a hand through his mane. "What were you doing outside in the sun anyway, you idiot?"

"Waiting for you."

Her hand stilled.

His mouth moved against her skin. "I think I always have."

"Goddamn you," Integra hissed. "You and your way with words. I can never stay mad at you."

Alucard laughed. "Now who's the one being blasphemous? And precisely what I was aiming at."

She swatted at him but it came out more like a love tap. "Get up. I've had enough of falling asleep outside."

"Ah...but..."

"Um, excuse me?" a voice piped up. "Er, would you like some tea?"

xx

xx

Pip watched the couple, and his every instinct told him that he and Seras had stumbled into a rabbit hole that was far deeper than was healthy.

They gave up on salvaging the porridge and opted to have tea and scones instead. If they were a bit stale no one said anything. No one _could_ say anything. Their unfortunate kitchen was practically defying the laws of physics containing the tension surrounding their enigmatic guest. Only this time, he had another person with him.

The four people sat at the table, a pair on each side, in varying degrees of discomfort. The woman was calmly sipping tea. The man was slouched in his seat with his hair shrouding his face, though his nose was visibly wrinkled, as if the faint smell of burnt porridge was offending him. Seras was looking both nervous and excited. As for Pip, he was clenching his unlit cigarette, trying to decide who was more intimidating: Blanche Neige or _la femme de fer_.

She was statuesque. Nobility, going by her dress, though why she was wearing men's clothing was beyond him. Come to think of it, Blanche Neige acted like he had some pedigree, too. Not that it was a surprise. That air of superiority had to stem from somewhere. Frankly, Pip had never witnessed a more bizarre couple. The woman seemed to be the central point the man gravitated toward; he reacted, however subtly, to her every movement. _And I thought I had it bad._

They were dangerous, they were important, and the situation was delicate.

The woman set her cup down.

Seras perked up. "Would you like some more?"

"No, thank you." The woman poised herself. "Ms. Victoria and Mr. Bernadotte, was it? I want to express my gratitude for your kindness. You have assisted us greatly."

"It was our pleasure!" Seras said. Pip had trouble keeping his face straight.

She smiled. "I hope my companion hasn't been too difficult."

The companion in question grunted.

"Actually," Pip started to say.

Seras kicked him under the table. "Not at all, Miss, um..."

Her spectacles gleamed. "Hellsing. Sir Integral Fairbrook Wingates Hellsing."

They blinked.

 _"Sir Hellsing?"_ Pip and Seras exclaimed.

"Wait, you're Sir Hellsing? _The_ Hellsing? Fuck, I should have known. Of course you are." Pip swiveled to the man who was now wearing a look of amusement. "Merde. That means—"

"You're a knight! A lady knight!" Seras burst out. She was positively starry-eyed. "That's amazing! The stories were true! A knight come to..." She turned to the man as well, realization dawning. "To rescue her prince..."

" _The_ prince," Pip groaned. They were so fucked.

"We must be famous," the prince remarked.

"Yeah, you know you are. You're the nameless—"

"Alucard," Integra said. "His name is Alucard."

The note of absolute finality brought about a moment of silence.

"Okay...but if you're the prince, and you're Sir Hellsing," Seras began, head whisking between the two of them, "why are you here? What happened?"

A dark cloud seemed to settle over the two and she squeaked. "Not that I'm trying to be nosy or anything! It's fine if you don't want to tell us."

"Let's see," Integra said. She leaned back in her chair with her arms crossed and considered the man and woman, debating on how much she should divulge and whether she should at all. They were innocents. The less they were involved in their predicament the better.

It was then that the hellhound pattered in, its massive size rendering the space claustrophobic. Integra had her pistol whipped out in an instant. "Why is there a hellhound in this house?"

"Exactly," Pip muttered.

"He's my pet dog," Alucard said.

"He's your _what?_ Since when?"

"Since yesterday, my Integra," Alucard answered with an amused smile. "His name is...Baskerville."

Integra narrowed her eyes. "You just made that up."

Alucard made a noncommittal noise.

The hellhound, henceforth to be known as Baskerville, approached despite staring down the barrel of Integra's gun with its six scarlet orbs and stayed next to its master's chair.

"I'm glad he has a name now," Seras declared. "Because it was Baskerville that brought the prince here."

Integra raised a brow. "Did he now?" She slowly lowered her pistol and after a pause, beckoned to the dog. The great black diabolical beast obeyed and sat before the knight, wagging its tail, and she laid a hand on its warmer head. "I should thank you, then," she said softly.

"It was a good thing too, or otherwise I don't know what would've happened. The prince was in such a terrible state, we didn't think he could survive, he was bleeding so much. It was a miracle, honestly, that he was still breathing—"

"Has anyone told you," Alucard said dangerously, "you talk too much?"

Seras flushed and closed her mouth.

"Hey, she was just telling it like it was," Pip defended. "You were practically a corpse when we found you."

"And I could make you into a corpse just to make you quiet."

"Did you hear that?" Pip brandished his cigarette at Alucard. "I could believe you were a prince before with your pompous attitude, but now there's no doubt you're _the_ prince. The ruthless one that they locked up in the castle that has eyes redder than ma mère's rouge."

"Was your mother a whore, to wear rouge that red?"

"Why you—"

"Would you two please stop?" Seras hissed. But her worried eyes were on Integra, who had frozen in place. Her face was impassive, yet underneath the smooth exterior Seras could discern the lines of what surely was grief.

She should know. She knew grief.

"I was hardly locked up, but even if I was, rest assured, I would have found a way to break out if it meant hunting you down and disemboweling your worthless insides."

"Real flattering. I bet the reason your ass is all the way here is because they kicked you out for your lovable disposition."

"Really! You guys need to—"

"Shut up, all of you," Integra said.

They did.

Integra stood. "If I wanted to witness male posturing, I would have gone home to my barracks," she said coolly. She shot a glare at Alucard, not that he could see it—though he could feel it, if his deepening moue was any indication—and then stared down at the Frenchman. "You are correct, Mr. Bernadotte. There has been a coup. Queen Wilhelmina seized the throne upon the king's death, attempted to assassinate the prince, and had me imprisoned for a brief period. The kingdom has since been overrun by beasts, is nigh on the brink of ruin, and you are currently housing the only person who could possibly fix this entire mess."

Seras gaped. Pip's cigarette fell from his lips. "Shit. I was right?"

"As much as we desire to make our leave and return you to your marital bliss, we cannot." Integra looked resigned. "I only ask that you allow us to impose on your hospitality for a while longer." She took a breath. "Until sundown."

"Sundown?" Alucard repeated. "Why sundown?"

"You of all people need to ask that?"

"I know what you are implying," Alucard said impatiently, "yet what you are proposing is to remain here until then. Why? Weren't you the one who said we shouldn't waste time? The sun tires me, Integra, it does not cripple me. You know this. I can make a paltry trip through a forest. It is merely a matter of you leading me."

"Even with your chest healed by our arrival, I will be leading a blind man into a battlefield," Integra murmured.

Strands of Alucard's hair appeared to be rising up into the air out of sheer irritation. "Blind as I am, surely you don't believe a battalion already half-wasted by Walter and your ilk will stand a chance against me? My shadows have grown stronger, Integra," he added in undertone. "They can scout out our enemies. They will be enough."

Integra's face shuttered. "They have, have they?"

"I can kill them. I can spill their blood and bones. You need only to lead me there."

Integra gazed at him. Their hosts, the dog, everything and anything were wiped out of existence except for the two of them. She was in that moment perfectly attuned. She could feel his frustration at being unable to see her as sharply as she could feel her own at being unable to see his eyes, those circles of fire that burned for _her_.

And she swore: she would ignite them anew.

"Yes," she said, "but I've promised you would see them as you did, have I not?"

This time, he was not going to let her words slide by.

"What," Alucard bit out, "are you planning?"

Integra merely pursed her lips.

"Um..." Seras spoke up, in a brave attempt to save their kitchen from the brewing tempest, "I think you're both tired. Maybe you should take a rest and, er, talk it out later?"

"A sound idea," Integra said, starting to move.

"Integra," Alucard growled.

"Oh, he needs, er, his bandage replaced..."

"I'll take care of it. Thank you, Ms. Victoria," Integra said.

"You can call me Seras," the younger woman said brightly. "The fresh ones are in a basket next to the bed."

"Very well, Seras," the knight replied, her hair already waving at them.

Alucard followed closely behind her, a dark miasma coiling around him, and Baskerville scampered out of his way and squeezed itself between Seras and Pip, who sat as stiff as boards. When the door of the guest room shut they finally sagged.

Baskerville whined.

"Yeah, you and me both," Pip agreed.

Seras gave him a withering look. "Did you have to bump heads?"

" _Le petit prince_ or not, I'll speak my mind," he said. He did, however, pick his cigarette up from the table and proceed to dismantle it, something Pip did when he was antsy. "They are one fucked up pair, Mignonette. Are we really going to do this?"

Seras stared at the door thoughtfully.

"They're very beautiful together," she remarked, and her husband choked. "I wonder what their story is."

xx

xx

"Don't tell me you're intent on doing something foolish," Alucard said as soon as the door shut.

"That's your forte, Alucard," Integra retorted, steering him toward the bed and seating him. "As is engaging in childish squabbles, it seems. Will you never grow up?"

He ignored her gibe and caught her arm. "You're not above making questionable decisions yourself, my Integra."

"Why thank you for your vote of confidence," she said sarcastically. She jerked away and took off her coat. She hung it up, along with her sabre, and grabbed the basket of bandages. "As if there's any comparison."

"Will you not tell me?" His lips curled. "Is this to be my punishment?"

"It wasn't meant to be anything, but you're welcome to the interpretation." Integra gripped the panels of his shirt. "Now," she growled, "shut up and let me work in peace." With that, she yanked his shirt off.

It went sailing to the floor.

The atmosphere of the small room became charged with something else. When he next spoke, Alucard's voice was velvety, unctuous wine. "I do recall that my worshipping of you was cut short by the sun and, as they say, arguments make the best foreplay." He circled a bare arm around Integra's waist and pulled her close. "Shall I finish what I started?"

If she could she would have punched him. "You know perfectly well I'm doing this to redress your wound, you insufferable lech," Integra snarled. "Unhand me."

He pressed his face into her breasts. "I don't wish to."

" _Alucard—_ "

"But I will, for I wish to see you when I do."

He sighed, and the sound, cold and hollow, reverberated within her rib cage. At length, Integra placed her hand on his back and gently stroked his spine. Alucard purred at that, at the sensation of her tan fingertips dancing up and down, melting his snowy skin in a not entirely chaste, not entirely sensual manner. The hand on her waist played with the ends of her lovely hair.

"Whatever you're planning," he whispered, "beware of the ramifications."

"Unlike you, Alucard," Integra drawled, "I actually consider the consequences."

He chuckled, and it was a much better sound to have echoing in her bones. "That is all I ask."

He let her go, and she dragged a stool in front of him and settled. It was quiet save for the rustle of his bandage being removed. The bloodstained fabric tangled at their feet and Integra looked him over.

Her ruthless, childish, insufferable, and beautiful, beautiful prince. He, with the exception of the broken nose she had given him all those years ago, had only ever been flawless. The same marble skin, the same sunset eyes, ever gleaming, ever telling her not to worry. And now they were marred. Singed. Perforated. She feared she would indeed do something foolish if she continued to look, and swiftly unfurled a roll of gauze and wrapped it around him.

"There was a moment I thought I would die from my wounds."

Her hands faltered in their task of tying a knot. Her voice was calm. "How did you not?"

Alucard waited until she was done, then lowered his arms from their raised position and found her hands.

"I had the most delightful of hallucinations...you. You were thirteen and wearing a blue dress and a straw hat with ribbons and you were terribly beautiful. Do you remember?"

"That dreadful summer day when I nearly abandoned you in the middle of the road due to your constant whining? Of course I do."

Alucard smiled but did not laugh. He caressed the lines of her palms and went on. "I remember it most fondly because, though I had consigned myself to absolute misery, your image was forefront in my mind. I knew then, that even at my lowest, I would only need to seek your presence, and it would lead me to higher ground."

His words left her speechless as usual, and she did not know whether to resent him or kiss him for it.

"You kept me going, Integra. You made me stay."

She decided to kiss him.

They exchanged the lightest brush. It remained that way because they were tired little souls. Inversely, the pressure on her hands increased. He pulled them both down on the mattress.

Her hair billowed and draped over their bodies. With a resigned quirk of her lips, Integra thought that perhaps she had rather anticipated this. They folded into each other as they had in their dream, and their fingers were laced between them. Alucard rested his chin on her head.

"I need to dress your eyes," she told him quietly.

He shook his head. "Rest, my Integra. After all, with whatever you have in store for me, it would hardly matter in the end, would it?"

Her smile was sad and pained all the same. "Touché."

"So let us rest, and while it won't be a new day when we wake up, it will at least be a new night, and for many others it will be the last."

His hand was still wrapped in the red cravat.

She might have commented on his sentimentality, had her eyelids not been drooping.

At the precipice of sleep she remembered the story she had told him once long ago.

_The prince was beautiful. He wore a hideous mask to hide his face..._

_But theirs is not that kind of fairy tale, is it?_

xx

xx

Eleven-year-old Integra had just returned from her first trip to the castle.

She said hello to her father and Walter, had a light supper, and afterwards made her way to the library on the third floor.

From one of the shelves she selected an old, leather-bound book.

_The diary of Abraham Van Helsing._

She skimmed through the pages, until she found a passage of note.

_. . . the red-eyed beast. He is one that preys upon the warmth of the living to sate his lack thereof. His is a body that only narrowly averted its decay, held up on borrowed blood, and his affliction he passes down with his scythe-like teeth. Who was his origin I know not. The wretched soul that hated himself so much that he would willingly stoop down and take the first sip of blood . . ._

_They call him vampire._

xx

xx

xx

xx

* * *

 

NOTES

La femme de fer - The iron lady

Le petit prince - The little prince

Oh dear, I really do hope you enjoyed this chapter. I had so much going on while I was writing it. Here we are, nonetheless, and I am so happy to see you all again. It seems like yesterday that I was wishing you wonderful people a wonderful April, and now it's May! How unbelievable. So here I wish you a lovely, lovely May. I eagerly await your feedback. Thank you always.


	16. XV

xx

**XV**

xx

Blood, the currency of the soul.

The medium by which lives are traded.

xx

xx

Alucard never told.

That day, he had been sorely tempted to drink her blood.

It would have been a taste, just a little taste. Just a drop of what would surely be the most exquisite nectar in the world. That glistening line of red upon her lovely skin, cumulating to a bead at the slope of her jaw. It had only been an arm's reach away. He could have swiped it off with a finger. He could have stuck it into his mouth. He could have savored it. Certainly he had hated that she had been harmed at all, had stabbed the oaf responsible a thousand times in his mind and never quite forgiven the butler for his meddling. But he had loved and admired the sight of her blood.

Rationality, though, did manage to override his baser instincts, rare as it was.

So he had been a gentleman and dabbed at that pretty color with the cravat he had meticulously washed and ironed himself the night before. And it meant something to him, that this piece of cloth, coincidentally red, had absorbed both his blood and hers.

"Did you know," Integra had once said, "that in the East they believe in a red string of fate?"

"Red string of fate? Enlighten me."

"They say that you are born with one end of a red string tied around your little finger." She held hers up. "And that if you follow it, it will inevitably lead you to the other end, which will be tied around the same finger of your fated match."

"Fated match," Alucard had mused. He had held up his own finger and curled it around hers. "And do you believe in this magical matchmaking string, my Integra?"

"I don't know much about strings," she had replied in all seriousness, "but with the amount of blood between us, I would say we have the red part covered."

And he had laughed and laughed, for she was perfectly right.

He had not been fair, had he, when he had accused Integra of sealing their fates? He was equally to blame. If he wanted, he could have disavowed the name, as he had everything else. He could have disavowed _her_. It would have been a simple matter. But no. He had desired it. Desired the red thread she had wrapped around not only his finger but also his very soul. His ravenous void had been teased with the glimmer of fulfillment, and hoarded it greedily.

She would, of course, remind him that she was not a thing to be hoarded.

In the end he was a conniving bastard.

Alucard had not been making empty promises when he had offered her an out. There was nothing he would deny her, not even his death. Yet he was at heart a selfish creature, and it was because he knew she was his, just as he was hers, that he had laid himself down at her feet. And she had seen right through him.

Sometimes he thought it would be easier if they exchanged _I love you_ s like normal people.

Who was he kidding? They were not normal people, and love seemed to them a terribly mundane word. It was swept away by the waves of the ocean of crimson between them, where their daintiest fingers were hooks, reeling in each other with their stained red lines.

"If there is such a thread, knowing you, it would be a tangled mess," Integra had said.

"Undoubtedly," Alucard had agreed, "but you would unravel it."

She had fixed him with her crystalline gaze. "I'm not sure if I can or if I even want to."

"You would find me nonetheless."

"I am here now, am I not?" she had pointed out.

"Yes," he had said, his eyes never straying from hers as he bowed over her hand. "And I am eternally grateful." He had sealed it with a kiss.

 _Integra,_ his blood sang. _Integra, Integra, Integra._

She shifted as if she heard the call in sleep. He tightened his embrace. Pressed against her like this, he was at his most proprietary. No one knew as intimately as he how slight she was under the layers of clothing, how delicate her structure, yet how powerful. A contradiction that made her strength all the more admirable. Love was war and when it came down to it, he was the one better armed; but she was the one more willful, and that was what forever drew him to her, what induced him to capitulate.

As he would in the coming night.

"So be it, if your remedy happens to be a pomegranate, my Integra."

He would take twelve.

xx

xx

It was past noon when Integra stirred. She felt more refreshed by her nap than she had in ages. _Probably,_ she thought grudgingly, _has something to do with Alucard being here._ She snorted. It was ironic. He was the cause of her problems and the solution as well. Prat could not be one thing at a time for once. She cracked an eye open and found her view obstructed by a hard chest. She wriggled in the vice of his arms and was unsurprised when they clamped down.

" _Integra_..."

"Shh, my prince," Integra coaxed. "Go back to sleep."

He uttered a petulant little moan but she was patient. His arms reluctantly loosened, inch by inch, and she slipped out and sat up on the bed. Her glasses had been removed. He had folded them neatly on the table behind her. She pushed them into place, blinked at her surroundings, then twisted and allowed herself several minutes of watching her prince slumber.

Alucard certainly enjoyed watching _her_ sleep, and she had been long resigned to that fact. He had told her it was because of how her features softened, for otherwise they were kept in check. "You used to be so at ease around me, when we were children," he had pouted. "You aren't anymore, not quite." He had been obnoxious about it, his red eyes glittering devilishly. "Do I fluster you, Integra? Does your heart beat madly when I am near you?"

She played this game well. She knew how to wipe that smirk off his face. All it had taken was a step into his shadow, a piercing look and a finger tracing the curves of his lips. The effect had been instantaneous. His eyes had darkened and his lips had parted. The tip of his tongue protruded and licked at her finger when it came to rest on his Cupid's bow. And when it slid down to his bottom lip, he took the digit into his mouth, and sucked.

She had not had to say a single word.

"Looks like," she had said lightly, "I'm not the only one who is flustered."

"You already knew that," he had mumbled, still nibbling, rapturous. "You know all there is to know about me."

"I do," Integra said, here and now in the cottage in the middle of the woods, interrupting her retrospection. "And sometimes I deplore it."

The only drawback to baiting Alucard was that she would eventually, true to his claim, end up with mad heartbeats, rendering her point moot. She could not help it. The way he stared at her, sanguine eyes hooded, mouth tending to her flesh with such obscenity—it was _sinful_. Her triumph she had earlier gained from simply having replaced his self-assured smirk with something raw and honest. She wanted his beauty but she wanted the ugly beneath it, too.

He had released her with a kiss, and she had let him press his ear to her heart.

"My Integra's heart," he had murmured. "How it flutters."

Here and now, in the cottage in the middle of the woods, Integra gazed down at Alucard and laid a hand over his heart. She could barely feel it beating. If it stopped altogether, then...

She abruptly withdrew, hating her thoughts.

_"I died, then came back to life."_

"Or was it death, mimicking life?" she asked.

She absolutely hated her thoughts.

Integra ran a hand through her hair. Her eyes caught a flash of red. The cravat, wrapped securely around his palm. A red piece of cloth that used to be quite ordinary, yet had somehow along the way become quite extraordinary, as though it had fancied itself the tablet upon which they inked their vows, hers and his.

A _tie._

She undid it, and took it with her when she stood. A crease had appeared on his brow and she smoothed it out. "What are you dreaming about, you silly man?"

He slanted his head into her touch and sighed one word.

She smiled. She gave him a lingering glance and then left the room.

The house was empty. The clock above the fireplace read half past three. There was a basin of water in the kitchen, which she used to straighten herself up. She badly needed a smoke. She went outside and squinted at the cloudless sky, so annoyingly bright. The snow crunched beneath her boots as she walked around the cottage. A voice was singing a tune off-key.

_"Black is the colour of my true love's hair...her lips are like some roses fair..."_

"I thought your husband's hair was auburn," Integra remarked.

Seras Victoria squeaked, nearly pulling the sheet she had been hanging up on the clothesline down to the ground. She reminded Integra of a skittish kitten that recovered quickly from its fright, to continue to stare at the object of its consternation with owlish eyes—as she was doing now. "Sir Integral!"

"I was wondering if I could obtain a cigarette from Mr. Bernadotte." It was no cigar but it would do in a pinch.

"Oh, I think I have..." Seras dug into her apron pocket. "Yes, here we go." She handed a cigarette to Integra and watched her light it and take a drag.

There was silence.

"Aren't you cold?" Seras gestured to Integra's lack of a coat.

"No."

"I, um, usually confiscate the cigarettes from Pip until after dinner," Seras went on, valiantly trying to make conversation. "You see, I've never really understood why people would want to smoke them."

"Stress relief," Integra answered. As expected, it was a cheap brand, the worst roll of tobacco she had ever tasted. Yet its fumes continued to spiral out and allay her.

"Is it stressful, being a knight?" Seras asked with genuine interest.

Integra leaned against the wall of the cottage. "Fairly." She was feeling uncharacteristically at ease. How long had it been since she had been alone with another woman? What a novelty this day was shaping up to be. It was possibly why her next words tumbled out at all. "Most of it comes from dealing with Alucard."

"Alucard—that's what you called His Highness." Seras finished hanging up the laundry. She was a little thing with a curious mind, and the lady knight fascinated her. "It's the first time I heard it. They don't mention his name, you know, in the stories."

Integra expelled a caliginous breath. "And what might these stories entail?"

"Well," Seras said, hesitant. "I don't know if I can say, Sir. They're not very happy."

Ashes peppered the snowy ground. "True stories rarely are."

Seras glanced out the corner of her eye, at the woman who was leaning in the shade of their house, and once again saw a mask of indifference conceal what she knew to be grief. She came to stand beside Integra. "Once upon a time," she found herself saying. "Once upon a time, a queen wished for a child who was as white as snow, as red as blood, and as black as ebony. And a prince was born, who was very beautiful, who had snow white skin and ebony black hair. But it wasn't his lips that were blood red, or his cheeks. It was his eyes."

Integra closed hers. "And then?"

"The queen died and the king remarried. The new queen was afraid of the prince. She did—well," Seras fidgeted, "it's hard to say what she did. Simple folk like us can't know much about the comings and goings of the castle. But it must've been...bad."

"People can be cruel," Integra said, sunlight filtering through her eyelids red. "Yet often they don't know that those once bitten are those who bite back hardest."

A strange look flickered on Seras' face just then, one Integra did not see. "Right."

"I'll finish your story." The knight brushed her fingers against the pocket of her breeches where she had placed the cravat. "The queen was a coward. She had her men try to kill the prince and..."

_"I died."_

"...failed. The prince started a rose garden. As his roses grew so did he. He waited..."

_"For you, my Integra."_

"...for the day he would become king. Then one day he decided to be an idiot and get himself blinded," Integra concluded in a rush. Her eyes snapped open. "That's the truth of it and, as you have said, not very happy." She pushed herself off the wall, pitching the cigarette stub, and began to saunter toward the woods. "Thank you for the entertainment, Seras."

"Huh?" Seras blinked, disoriented. Then she sputtered. "Wait! Where are you—?"

"I'm going for a walk."

"But you forgot the part about—" She floundered. "About the lady knight—"

Integra faltered.

"—who loved the prince!"

She turned to the younger woman slowly with an amused smile. "Do people say that? You must be embellishing. They wouldn't have put it in such an idealistic term."

Seras pinked. "W-well, they might have put it as, er, _consorting_ with him, but—"

Integra let out a laugh. "All these rumors take a life of their own, they're like monsters themselves." Her eyes curved into pale blue crescents. "And yet you've derived from them a little romance."

Seras scratched her head bashfully. "Pip calls me a dreamer."

"That ma chère is," the Frenchman said, coming around the corner. He had been looking for his wife, though he had not been counting on finding her with their scarier guest. "There you are, _mon rêveur_ , and Jeanne d'Arc with you."

Integra raised a brow. "Comparing me to the Maid of Orléans, I don't know if I should be flattered or offended."

"It's a compliment, trust me," Pip said, and withstood the woman's unimpressed look. "So, two lovely ladies behind a house, that can only mean two things. Either they're talking shit about their men or," he grinned cheekily, "they're having a Sapphic love affair. Ma chère, you're making me jealous."

Both of Integra's brows rose and Seras' blush deepened. "Pip!"

"Did Mignonette happen to mention how much she admires you?"

Integra raised her brows even higher. Seras now resembled a radish. " _Pip!_ Really!"

"What, it's not like— _ow!_ Hell, woman, not my nose again—"

With a shake of her head and a snort Integra left the couple to their foreplay and entered the woods, which at this time of day, free of otherworldly creatures, were peaceful. The sun was in decline. The bare branches cast a maze of shadows on the snow. The air was chilly, and seeped through her shirt, yet the cold had not bothered her in quite a while. The lady knight hummed her hostess' song as she thought of red, red eyes.

_Black is the colour of my true love's hair_

_His eyes are like some roses fair..._

xx

xx

The Queen was groveling.

"Surely there is something you desire. I can give it to you! Name your price!"

Walter C. Dornez, retainer of Hellsing, glowered down at the woman. Her tears and snot were making a painter's nightmare on her face. He sniffed.

Near daybreak most of the beasts had scampered into their holes, but not before having a limb or two severed. Opportunities to wreak mass destruction were few and far between and he had run with this one as much as his aged joints allowed. The opposition had been rounded up and thrown into the dungeons. Currently, in the aftermath of the night's events, he was taking it upon himself to interrogate Queen Wilhelmina and displace her from her chamber where she refused to budge.

"I assure you, madam, there is nothing in the world you could offer that would sway me."

"What about youth?" the Queen said eagerly. "I can brew you a potion that will restore you to your youth. You would prefer that, wouldn't you?" Her voice became coy. "I've heard about how dashing you were as a young man, Mr. Dornez. Wouldn't you like to return to those good old times?"

"Madam," Walter started calmly, "even if you were of sound enough mind to brew such a potion, and even if such a potion did exist, it would not make one iota of difference. You forfeited all bargaining chips when you conspired with Richard all those years ago to kill my liege. In fact." His calm facade faded to reveal pure contempt. "Conversing with you to this extent is threatening to rekindle my long discarded fondness for swearing. So shut the fuck up, and be thankful that my orders were to make you squirm instead of chopping your head off."

The Queen shook with fright and rage. "That impudent master of yours will have already lost hers in the forest, searching for a dead man!"

"The prince is not dead."

"He is! He is dead!"

Walter shrugged. "If he is, I doubt it would be a lasting issue."

The Queen stared at him as the implications of his statement sunk in. "So you knew what he was!" she shrieked. "Then why did you allow him to live? You lot are hunters! You should have killed him!"

Walter sighed. He often still wondered about that himself.

Perhaps he had mellowed with age. A few decades earlier he would have nipped the monstrous potential in the bud. But he had grown fond of the prince. Alucard was a conniving little shit and took glee in flaunting Integra's affection for him at Walter, grating on the butler's qualms about their relationship. The way he had become a permanent fixture in Integra's life had made a part of Walter wither. He was sure the ghost of some Hellsing ancestor was kicking his ass for his negligence.

Yet there was none in the universe to whom he would entrust Integra other than Alucard.

He was a monster. But he was one devoted. He was one unconditional. In the end, for all his shamelessness, Alucard treated Integra with a reverence witnessed in pagan monasteries. He would test her limits. He would overstep. She would tell him to behave.

And he would.

"Monsters can be tamed, and if anyone can tame the king of monsters, it is my liege," Walter said. "Now, if you please, stand up. I would prefer not to drag you to your cell." He flexed his wrists. "I abhor messes."

"That whorish master of yours will follow the prince straight into hell!" the Queen screamed.

Walter saw red, and in his anger he missed one detail.

The Queen had been reaching behind her, and he had not noticed until it was too late.

She flung a pouch at him and it exploded in his face. Walter clapped a hand to his mouth but had breathed it in. It was some sort of somniferous powder. His legs gave out beneath him. His mind was a jumble of curses.

Fuck, he _was_ old.

The Queen stood up shakily. "Off you go to sleep now, old man."

The last thing Walter saw was the pointed toe of the Queen's shoe kicking at his ribs and he thought, _I'll have to retire after this._

xx

xx

The sky was orange when she returned. Smoke was wafting from the chimney as inside dinner was being prepared. Baskerville had been shooed out, and his massive paw scratched at the door. When she strode forth he stopped and bounded over to her. Integra patted him with wry indulgence. "You really are just an oversized dog, aren't you?"

Baskerville, whose maw came up to her chest, barked once. Then at the footsteps approaching behind her he padded away. Integra did not have to turn to know who it was.

Her coat was draped over her shoulders, and long arms wrapped themselves around her waist.

"You weren't here when I awoke."

She leaned into him. "I went for a walk. I've been gone for, what, forty minutes?"

"Leaving me in the company of these incompetent and inquisitive simpletons we have the misfortune of calling our hosts." Alucard perched his chin on her shoulder and nosed her hair. "And you've had a smoke." He said this even more unhappily. "Not even a quality cigar. You smell like that noxious Frenchman now."

Integra just rolled her eyes.

"Can you not quit?" Alucard burrowed into her neck. For someone who was bemoaning the way she smelled, he was being overabundantly attentive. "I can give you an alternative addiction if you're so in need of it." His breath fanned her nape. "Something much, much more constructive and more _fun_."

Integra smirked and lightly gripped his arms. "If it's not something I can do in public, then no."

"Who says we can't do it in public?"

She drove her elbow into his gut. "You are absolutely depraved."

His laughter came out as a wheeze.

Alucard behaved for a while, simply cocooning her in his embrace as above them the heavens blazed. He could not appreciate the palette, merely deducing from the angle of sunlight he could feel upon him that it was the golden hour. He could only imagine her brilliance, her skin aglow, her hair gilded. "You have a point," he said out of the blue. "Thrilling as it may be, we would never do it. I wouldn't dare allow a soul the slightest chance of glimpsing your glory. That sight is mine and mine alone."

Integra raised a hand over her shoulder to stroke his face. "Precisely."

He nuzzled into her touch at her terse reciprocation of proprietorship. He was an addict, a bigger addict than she ever was—he could not function without her. "Addicts are derided as having lost control," Alucard said, "but I rather think of it as having gained another kind of control. The extreme kind, revolving around the irresistible reassurance that at least one thing in their life will guarantee salvation."

Integra twisted in his arms. He was wearing a clean shirt borrowed from Bernadotte, with the sleeves rolled up. He inclined his head.

"Is the hour nigh, my Integra?"

She inched up and pressed her forehead to his. She inhaled.

"Mr. Bernadotte seems to have a preference for cheap cigarettes," Integra said, throwing Alucard off. Why on earth would she talk about that Frenchman at this moment? In this position?

"And for nicknames," she continued, as if this was the most logical topic to discuss while her lips were millimeters from his. "He compared me to the Maid of Orléans."

"Fitting, if you disregard her unfortunate demise," Alucard conceded. "And so? Did he offend you?" Could he kill him? That would be enjoyable.

"It got me reminiscing." Integra fixed him with a gaze he could not see. "You, after all, are apt to canonize me." She was drawing away and he was loathe to let her. "But Alucard, I'm not a fucking saint."

"I never asked you to be a fucking saint." His lips quirked. "Though, that would be an interesting combination."

Integra did not reply, and he was starting to become agitated. She pulled out the cravat from her pocket. She had wrapped something in it. When she unfurled the fabric and placed the object on her palm, it gleamed scarlet in the lighting, and his nose creased.

She held it aloft. "You know what this is."

Alucard hissed.

Her silver cross.

Integra closed her palm. Her locks danced in the breeze, tapering like scythes. "I can't be a fucking saint," she whispered. "Saints cannot be selfish. If I were one, I would have done more than dunk this cross into the Darjeeling the first time we met when I suspected you were a vampire."

xx

xx

"Mirror, mirror, tell me what I should do."

Queen Wilhelmina's hands were trembling as she clutched the mirror. She had tied Walter up and locked him in a side chamber, and had released her men from the dungeons. "I'll execute these traitors come morning. But first I wish to get rid of these pests that appear at night. You said this was a side effect of his absence. Tell me the solution."

"You need not worry about that," the mirror said.

xx

xx

"What did she say?"

The cottage door was open a peep and Pip and Seras were eavesdropping behind it. They were supposed to call in Sir Hellsing and the prince for supper, but had gotten sidetracked by Integra's mention of Pip and then the very strange turn the conversation had taken.

"Vampire? Did she say _vampire?"_

Seras hummed. "Well, that explains the shadows. And the healing. And the hair."

"And the fucking hellhound." Pip groaned. "We are so, so fucked."

xx

xx

Darjeeling. It always had to be Darjeeling.

Alucard was unsurprised by her revelation. In fact, he was amused.

"Is that effective at all?" he asked. He was charmed by the image of young Integra, carrying that rattling tray to his library whilst worrying her pretty little head over the effects of tea when mixed with a blessed silver cross the entire way. He had never known. How shrewd she had been even then.

"It was either that or shoving it up your nose," she deadpanned.

Alucard chuckled at the memory. "Truly, you are full of surprises. And here I thought that after nearly ten years of courtship we would have no secrets left between us."

_"Ten years? Damn, and I thought I had it bad with the six months I had to chase after you."_

_"Pip, be quiet!"_

The two pointedly ignored the couple eavesdropping behind the door.

"So you have had your suspicions. Of course you did. You are a Hellsing. The prodigy of a long line of hunters. And it's not as if I hid any aspect of my nature from you. I bared myself to you completely." His smile was brittle. "My flesh, my bones, my soul. Ah, but perhaps, not this tidbit." He licked his lips. "Since this seems to be a night for confessions, I must divulge that I have forever passionately desired your blood."

Integra, too, was unsurprised. She was pensive.

"Now, the question is," Alucard said, almost inaudibly, "does it make a difference?"

Integra studied the silver cross.

"Does it, my Integra?"

The end of it had been sharpened some years ago for practical use. She usually had it pinned to her cravat; if not, then tucked into a pocket. Wherever it was, it weighed heavily on her. It was the part of her that she had turned a deaf ear to, when it had told her that day to _run, run, don't look back, he's a monster, don't you see? Integra, Integra, you should have never brought tea. You should have dashed away his expectations. You should have never returned to that room._

Yet she was Integral Hellsing and she did not run.

"No. Everything remains the same."

She made the rules.

She held the rose. She held the stake.

The sky was darkening. The moon was out, full and erubescent. Strange things happened under a moon like this.

They stood as parallels, as perfect equals and perfect opposites. "That day in the garden, I told you the story of the Lanling Prince. Do you remember?"

"The beautiful prince with the hideous mask." Alucard hung his head. His smile, hidden behind a curtain of hair, was the emptiest it had ever been. "Are you my wife who spits blood on my mask, waking me up? Or are you my empress who poisons me?"

The silver glinted in the air.

"Both."

She plunged the cross into the junction of her neck.

xx

xx

"For soon it will all be over," said the mirror. "The knight will have offered the prince a fruit. Apple or pomegranate, it does not matter. What matters is that he will take it."

The Queen blinked rapidly, not comprehending.

"What?"

"Why the confusion, meine Königin? Was it not your wish that the creatures be banished once more? They were so in the first place because of the prince. The solution, then, is to bring the prince back in."

"But—but—" The Queen was choking. "You said—"

The mirror was not benign.

xx

xx

There was commotion.

Seras gasped loudly and tried to rush out to stop Integra the same time Pip cursed and tried to fling open the door. They collided with each other and fell into an ungraceful heap in the snow.

The knight and the prince took no notice.

Alucard smelled the blood before he realized what she had done. He felt equal parts angry and devastated and mournful and aroused and desirous, as if he had fragmented into a thousand, a million pieces that would need decades to reassemble. In the dark of his world her blood was a bright red beacon, funneling his senses, and he lurched forward. He might have crumpled her sleeves as he clutched at them to—what? To shake her? To yell at her? He did not know. He only knew by his cold shins that he had knelt at her feet.

"My Integra." It appeared his mangled eyes could still produce tears. Or was that blood, wetting his cheeks? "My integral part, my integrity."

Integra knelt as well, her blue eyes bright, her lips trembling. The pain did not register. She was grieving for him. For them.

"So this is it."

She cupped his face and allowed the blood to flow between her fingers.

"I have been dead once." He sighed, and the sound was like that of a child's, who had met his death one winter day. "And I suspect, had I given in to my baser instincts that day, I would not have made it far enough to be able to meet you." He covered her hands with his. "To hold you." He kissed her palms. _"To love you."_

Love, that mundane word.

_For despite being the tainted, wretched, greedy thing it was, it was love._

They bled together. Her coat had slipped from her shoulders. Her wound was deep enough, and blood issued forth, running down her clavicle, down the curve of her breast and staining her shirt crimson. "Drink."

"I've never," Alucard whispered, so vulnerable, so childlike. "I've never before. What if I hurt you? What if I—"

"You won't," Integra said. "You love me."

xx

xx

_"You said he was dead!"_

"I never lied to you." The mirror chortled. "When death is mimicking life to the best of his abilities, you either be polite and call him living, or be honest and call him dead."

xx

xx

xx

xx

_At the first sip, he tasted heaven._

_Her blood was as sweet as it had been in their dream, and he wanted more and more and more._

_He took a second, a third, and then..._

_How strange. He could see._

_His eyes were red, a beautiful red._

_But perhaps, not as red as his tears._

xx

xx

xx

xx

* * *

NOTES

Mon rêveur – My dreamer

As an old AxI shipper who nitpicks the series (Manga/OVA) too often to be healthy, there is one scene that I believe captures their relationship beautifully, and it is not the scene where Alucard calls Integra countess and vice versa. It's in OVA 9, moments before Integra gives Alucard permission to kill Walter. Walter shouts at Alucard to stand and face him, but Alucard is just kneeling there, facing Integra. He leans down, kisses the ground and I just about burst into tears, because it's all so poignant.

I'm so grateful to you all who have said kind words for my depiction of Alucard and Integra and their relationship. When I write them, what I'm trying to emulate is what I felt from that scene. Of course, this fic has Alucard and Integra on more or less equal ground instead of a master-servant relationship, and there are bound to be differences. But always, the essence I'm trying to capture is the "frail, sobbing" child who loves the ground whereon his long lost _integrity_ stands.

May is a super busy month for me, and it was painful to get this chapter out. Hence it is up a week later than usual, and I am very sorry. This chapter, however, is a teensy bit longer, and I hope that will make up for it. Thank you, thank you, thank you always for your most wonderful, most kind support. I cannot do without you.


	17. XVI

xx

**16**

xx

The question was, would he drain her?

 _No._ She quashed the thought at once. _He won't. When I tell him to stop, he will._

Then the question was, she revised, to what extent would her blood affect him?

That had been the question for a while.

She walked in the woods, lost in the whir of her mind. She had a hand on the hilt of her sabre, having collected it even as she had overlooked her coat. She, the hunter, was never without a weapon. And it was because she, Integral Fairbrook Wingates Hellsing, was a hunter that she knew monsters, better than they knew themselves.

After Alucard had told her of the fate he had met one lonely winter day, he had left her sixteen-year-old self with deep and troubling thoughts. "Don't stay up late because of me," he had said. He kissed her again. He touched her again. They felt very nice, these kisses, these touches, and she knew she could easily get addicted to them if she was not careful. "You need your rest, my Integra. I'll leave you to your dreams. Perhaps there, I'll shall have leeway to be a more attentive lover."

To his wicked grin she had said, "Get going, or I really will throw you out the window."

To his credit, his laughter this time was quiet.

That night, however, Integra had been unable to confirm whether Alucard was a more attentive lover in dreams. She stayed up well into the blue hour, and in its eerie light she mourned for him. She wept for the child who had died that day. She hated the Queen more than she had hated anyone in her life, even Richard. She wanted to see the kingdom burn.

In the morning, considerably calmer but with dark circles under her eyes, she had gone down to breakfast.

Walter had been flabbergasted by her appearance. "You haven't been up all night, surely?"

Integra grunted and sat in front of her meal. She stared at it. Bells went off in Walter's head.

"Walter," she said suddenly.

"My lady."

"Let's discuss a hypothetical situation."

Walter, who was not senile, sensed immediately that this was about Alucard, that little shit.

The young knight sat ramrod straight in her chair, her mien grave. "Consider an individual born with peculiar traits. Red eyes, cold skin, aversion to sunlight and silver. He or she is able to regenerate at a remarkable speed. To such an extent that he or she seems to defy death." She paused. "An individual like that, my ancestors would have called a..."

"Vampire, my lady."

"Vampire," Integra echoed.

This had always been, Walter felt, a rather flamboyantly large elephant that Integra, for all her rationality, had chosen to avoid. She was much too fond of Alucard.

"But he is not undead." Integra had reverted to a single pronoun without realizing. "He lives and breathes and he grew up with me." Like a swan she was the picture of repose, yet under the table her nails were digging into her skin. "He doesn't drink blood."

"Vampires lead a suspended life, my lady," the old hunter said. "They went extinct before my time, you are aware, and remain a myth of a myth—but if they were to reemerge right this moment, that aspect of them would have not gone anywhere. In their existence, blood is the key. Blood is the currency of the soul, the medium by which lives are traded. When a vampire drains his victim dead, he gains his life and soul. And on the forcibly lengthened path he roams, an additional set of stepping stones is laid."

Integra listened, though she had gathered all this already from the diary of Abraham Van Helsing.

"When you get down to it, the situation with...our hypothetical friend begs this question. What will happen when he drinks the blood of another at last? Will it unhinge him? Will it sever him from humanity once and for all? If his vampirism has not yet completely manifested, what then will push him to his final descent?"

Her nails dug deeper into her palms.

"I'll have to...I'll make sure..."

Walter rested a hand on her shoulder and she jumped. Her fists unfurled.

"You cannot change a person's nature, Integra," Walter said softly. "You cannot change what a person was born to be and will be."

Integra froze. Her shoulders were tense, rebellious.

Then she relaxed. She seemed to have made peace with something.

"It doesn't matter," she whispered.

A maid entered the dining room. "My lady, there is a delivery for you from His Highness."

Alucard and his timing. She sighed. "Bring it to me."

It was a bouquet of a dozen winter roses. Their petals were brittle from the frost, but that was what she found charming about them—the fact that there was none other who would think to gift such flawed blossoms. His blackened, bulbous, odorous flowers, cultivated by his hands, come to wilt in hers. Integra buried her nose into them. She smiled faintly, feeling her melancholy ebb away. Walter was looking discomfited.

There was a note. She opened it.

_The earth is but a passion-flower_

_With blood upon his crown._

_And what shall fill his failing veins_

_And lift his head, bowed down?_

_This cup of peace, this silver rose_

_Bending with fairy breath_

_Shall lift that passion-flower, the earth_

_A million times from Death!_

"Flatterer," she said. "Where on earth does he get these poems?" But her mood was greatly improved. She handed the flowers to Walter and kept the letter to herself. "Put them in a vase and place it in my bedroom."

"Very well," Walter said, a tad stiffly.

"And I've been meaning to talk to you about the porter," Integra continued as she began to cut into her breakfast. She acted as if the earlier conversation had not taken place, but Walter knew better. There was a spark in his lady's eyes, one of determination and fortitude, and he nodded in acknowledgment.

"Yes, my lady."

"It appears he has trouble keeping awake at night..."

Integra would not mope. She would hold her head high and, if the Three Fates insisted on being bitches, she would tailor their tapestry.

And indeed, as it turned out, they were bitches.

The knight stood in the forest as the golden sun sank in the west. In her pocket was a cross of silver.

She would not bow down to their whims.

She would make them run.

"It doesn't matter," twenty-year-old Integra whispered. "Everything remains the same. For he is mine, in any shape or form."

xx

xx

_"My Integra..."_

The cross, stained, was half-buried in the snow.

Alucard tugged her shirt open, nosing the flow of blood that had made its way down between her breasts. He trailed his tongue up the red line to her left clavicle, where he stilled. His mouth hovered above her wound, hesitant.

"Drink," Integra said. On her previously solemn face there was now a ghost of a smile. "Don't let it go to waste."

He moaned at her words. And because he ever capitulated when it came to her, he latched on and did as she bid.

 _Heaven,_ Alucard thought. _This must be heaven._ In that instant, all the finest wines in the world were turned unpalatable. There was only Integra, his Integra and her blood. Warm and thick and soothing his throat as if it had not been quenched for ages. Maddeningly fragrant. Exquisitely sweet. He lost himself in this poison of his choice.

She tangled her fingers in his mane, betwixt pain and pleasure. Surely this was something to panic about, that this monster of a man was sucking the life out of her. Yet her life was precisely what she trusted him with. Integra's eyelids fluttered but she fought for clarity, even as she grew lightheaded with each sip he took.

At the first sip, his shadows reacted.

 _Welcome, welcome,_ they seemed to croon, writhing around them. _Our most tyrannical king and his most beloved queen._ They heralded his descent, now tinged with red, burning as embers, these manifestations of Alucard's deviltry. _You who have consumed directly from the vein, have fallen from grace._

 _Fallen from His grace, to Hers,_ he agreed.

With the second sip, the third, the fourth, quickly becoming mouthfuls—he fell into his place on the wheel of fortune. The place where, as he was beginning to understand, he would endure as the sovereign of the night, a shell of a man. And he could not care less. _Such is fate. If I am to be damned then let me give her a kingdom in hell. We will run Hades and Persephone out of their thrones. The Devil himself, he shall be succeeded by me._

Together, they would reap the earth.

And with that, his teeth sharpened and elongated...

_And his heart, it almost..._

Integra felt them. "Enough," she said. Her breath was choppy. "Alucard."

A terrible second passed in which he did not respond.

Then he gave her a slow, loving lick that had her sighing heavily into his ear. He kissed her wound. He lifted his head, leaned away, but did not look at her.

Integra was having none of that. She gently turned his face toward her. She brushed his hair aside.

Red.

The first color, the most honest color, the color of blushes and burns and blood. That was the color of his eyes and she was gazing upon them _at last._

She smiled tremulously. "Welcome back."

Such a carnal color, but his eyes could make it appear so fragile.

They were the sheerest rose.

Alucard simply stared. His Integra. She had been true to her word. He had regained his eyes, and what beautiful sight, far surpassing his worth, they were beholding. Those bright blues, unwavering and pure. That dark skin. That mellow blonde hair. What perfection. The little cut on her cheek was only proof of her valor. He found himself reaching out, and with the gentlest hands he outlined her face. She was smiling at him, even now, when he was this. Ah, but she knew. She knew this would be. His fearless queen.

_Lover, we have damned each other._

"I have returned," he replied.

Crimson had stained his teeth and lips and had dribbled down his chin. "You've made a mess again," she said.

He did not blink when a finger wiped the droplets off.

Integra studied her own blood. "How do you feel?"

Alucard was fixated on it as well. "Powerful." He licked his lips clean. _"Hungry."_

"But you wouldn't attack me, would you?" she asked lightly.

That got through his lustful haze. He snarled at the notion. "Never."

"Then open."

Still unblinking, he obeyed.

She stuck the finger in his mouth, uncaring of his carnivorous teeth.

His eyes became hooded and his tongue twisted around it in rapture.

 _I don't deserve you,_ his mind murmured. _I don't, I don't, I don't._

But because he was a selfish man—no, a selfish _monster_ —he laved her finger unabashedly and, when he was done, he removed it, slanted his head and kissed her.

 _Love me,_ his mind called. _Love me, love me, love me. This pitiful man whom you have willingly fed. This wretched monster who would willingly be enslaved by you. Love me, love me._ And she heard. She heard his childlike cries. She stroked his face, thumbing away the dried tears and the fresh ones that came after. She answered with tears of her own and they mixed, dropping into the snow pink. Her blood was sweet when she tasted it on him.

Yet it had to end abruptly, when Integra pulled back to draw shallow breaths. She slumped into him.

"Integra?" he asked in a frightened voice.

"I'm fine," she gritted out.

"It's the blood loss," another voice said—the country girl. She and her husband were standing outside the cottage door, looking anxious. "She's lost too much too quickly," Seras elaborated. "She needs time to recover."

"Out of the question," Integra said at once. "It's already past sundown. We have to go back and reclaim the kingdom."

"How?" Pip asked. His braid was around his neck. He had been dismantling a cigarette stub, which he tossed aside when he spoke up. "Look, at this point you could do some hocus pocus shit that'll transport you back and I wouldn't bat a fucking eyelash. Go make _enfer_ out of the place for all I care. But see, here's the thing. On one hand you have Blanche Neige, who's back on his feet—" he met Alucard's baleful gaze without flinching, "—and on the other hand you have la femme de fer, who's gone the opposite. No offense, but you're going to fuck shit up while your demoiselle's in that state?"

Alucard bared his sharpened teeth.

"I _am_ offended," Integra said. "Mr. Bernadotte, you are talking drivel. I'm perfectly _fine_." She pushed at Alucard and made to stand.

And swayed.

"Stay put, you ridiculous woman," Alucard snapped, catching her and dragging her into his lap. He cradled her to his chest. "Reckless, heedless woman."

"Shut up, this is your fault," Integra griped.

"You really shouldn't move, Sir," Seras said, tentatively stepping forward. "At least take this first." She held out a steaming mug. "It's yellow dock tea, it'll help a bit. And you really should put your coat on..."

Alucard took the mug without warning, ignoring the girl's startled squeak, and devoted his attention to Integra's condition. Her wound had coagulated, yet it was clear she was suffering from the aftereffects. Her body was shivering, her pulse erratic. He brought the tea to her paling lips and clenched his jaw when she did not protest.

"My fault, you say?" He smiled ruefully. "My Integra, how do you expect me to resist when you offer yourself like the ripest pomegranate? There is only so much a man can withstand, a monster even less."

She made an indecipherable noise, busy downing the tea. When she finished he set the cup in the snow and waited for her to gather herself.

"Man and monster," she chuckled.

She pressed her ear to his heart.

"You've always been both," Integra murmured. "Sometimes more the one than the other. But always both. I can hear your heart. It still beats. It's far slower, almost stationary. But you're not entirely gone yet."

"It's because," he said plainly, "it was _you_."

"Then my judgment was correct."

Alucard laughed low in his throat. "Reckless," he repeated. "Absolutely reckless. My Integra, this is only the lull before the storm."

His fingers convulsed against her flesh as evidence of his statement and she was reminded of when she had prevented him from killing Thomas Seymour. His wrist had been thin and cold, yet she had been acutely aware of the latent power shimmering in his veins. It was a wave now, crashing down on a pier.

"There's no stopping this now."

She was the one on the edge observing the tide.

_Lover, we have damned each other._

"So be it," Integra said, before she felt out of breath.

Alucard leaned in and his midnight hair formed a curtain around their faces, hiding his red and wide and worried eyes from the others.

"I was remiss," he whispered.

She huffed. "None of that." She then smiled crookedly and asked, her voice teasing, "Was my taste on par with your fancies, at the very least?"

His pupils dilated instantly. _"Yes."_

"Erm," Seras coughed, and they broke apart. She was blushing. "Your coat, Sir."

This prompted a silent conversation between the knight and the prince wherein the former adopted a nonnegotiable look and the latter grew increasingly unhappy. But he had to relent and, mouth pressed into a thin line, Alucard assisted Integra to her feet.

"You shouldn't overstrain yourself, Sir Integral!" Seras protested.

"This is hardly overstraining," Integra said, though it took effort to remain upright. She braced herself against Alucard, until she was steady enough to retrieve her coat and slip it over her shoulders. The moon loomed, unnaturally large and lucent, and she knew it was telling them to move.

"Now what?" Pip asked.

"Why do you ask?" Alucard countered. "This ceases to concern you. My wounds have healed, and so there goes your recompense." He smiled mockingly at Seras. "You may run back to your insipid little livelihood. Or surely," he drawled, his diabolic eyes swinging back and forth between the husband and wife, "this unnecessary intermeddling in our affairs is not because you have anything substantial to offer?"

Pip had lit another smoke and was dragging it into his lungs. "We," he let out, glancing at his wife, "would like to offer our help."

Alucard could not help it. He snickered.

"Give me a fucking break," Pip muttered. "I'm a mercenary, alright? _Ex-_ mercenary, but I haven't been out of it for too long."

"A mercenary," Alucard sneered. "A dog for hire. Well, well. Is this about money, then? Quite far from the Good Samaritan you've masqueraded as."

"Your Highness, I would appreciate it if you don't insult my husband," Seras spoke up, quietly but firmly. "I talked him into it." She persevered against the crimson gaze. "We want to come with you. We'll look after Sir Integral and keep her safe while you take the castle."

"I don't need looking after," Integra said, annoyed.

Alucard tilted his head. "Let's say I see the point of having a mercenary with her," he said. "What of you, country girl? What is your use? Your motive?"

When Seras appeared to have trouble putting it into words, Integra smirked. "I know. It's because she admires me."

Seras went bright red. "That's not—I mean—"

Integra sighed. "Do whatever you want. Accompany me if you wish, I don't care. We've no time to waste." She turned to Alucard. "Well? How are we going to do this?"

Alucard's lips curled in displeasure at the resolution, yet she was right, they had no time for second-guessing. He instead pondered on her query. He gauged his powers. They were more or less what he had always had, enhanced ten, perhaps hundredfold. Integra's blood had been _magnificent_. He flitted his fingers, and the shadows of the night slithered around him, inky and spinous. He eyed them.

Baskerville chose that moment to emerge from the dark, as if summoned. There was a suspicious smear on his maw that belied the innocuousness of his wagging tail. He trotted up to the group.

"That dog always seems to come from nowhere," Pip grumbled.

Alucard narrowed his eyes.

Then slowly, he smiled.

He crooked a finger and the hellhound came to him, lolling his tongue.

"Not nowhere," Alucard purred, scratching the dog's ears. "Always somewhere. And shadows are _everywhere_."

xx

xx

_With skin white as sorcery, hair black as obsidian, and eyes red as the flame..._

xx

The soldier spat on the ground, and saw the phlegm land in a puddle of melted snow. Goddamn, it had been a crazy couple of days. The prince had been declared dead, the king had been declared dead, and barmy Queen Wilhelmina had declared herself ruler. Which was all well and good, because as barmy as the Queen was she was a looker. Then again, no one had been counting on the kingdom to be overrun by monsters barely a few hours into her reign.

"I almost wish she hadn't done away with the traitors," he said to his partner. "They were bloody handy around the fuckers. Especially that old man with the wires. What was his name again?"

"Dornez," his partner said. "Sir Hellsing's butler."

"Oh yeah. Where is Sir Hellsing, anyway?"

"Who knows. Maybe the bint was busy getting her hair done."

They guffawed.

"For all I know she's locked up along with the rest of them. Whatever it is, the bitch had it coming. Devil's whore. She's barmier than the Queen. Who the hell does she think she is, wearing clothes only a proper gentleman should wear and strutting around like she's better than us?"

"Who knows, mate. The prince must've been into that kind of stuff," the first soldier sniggered.

It was very liberating to be able to make light of the prince without fearing mysterious consequences. "Damn, that is one motherfucker I'm glad I never have to see the face of again. Creepy son of a bitch."

"They do say, though, that the reason these beasties cropped up was because the prince wasn't here."

It was twilight, and in the sky the moon was full and solitary clouds were drifting. The northwestern part of the castle grounds where they were standing guard was mercifully peaceful. Most of the beasts were prowling about in the front.

The first soldier spat again. "Better the beasties than the Devil's son, I say."

They wished the Queen would hurry up and find a solution for this mayhem, though it seemed it would be late in forthcoming. Apparently, she had been witnessed raving about some "mirror" and "deceit" and "treachery." What on earth did a mirror have to do with anything? Women were crazy. And goddamn, it was tiring having to brandish their guns at the slightest sounds.

What they heard then, that had them brandishing their guns, was not a slight sound. It was a rather loud sound, and it came from the periphery of the grounds, near the forest. It was a medley of voices.

"The hell? Who out of their mind is out there?"

The noise swelled in volume until, gradually, it subsided.

"I'll go take a look," the second soldier said, hands tense on his rifle. "I'll signal if something's wrong."

The way was hindered by trees and bushes, and his light flickered in and out of sight as it shrunk into a dot. The first soldier had assumed that the signal, particularly in their situation where supernatural hearing was rampant, would be something like waving the torch. Yet it was not so. The light was snuffed out. In its stead there was an awful, albeit muffled, scream.

The soldier blanched. "What the fuck is going on over there?"

Years of training forced the man to move his feet toward the site. His rifle shook in front of him as walked closer.

And closer...

And closer...

He stepped on a puddle and his quaking eyeballs dropped. He started to sweat profusely.

Blood.

There was a growl, guttural and rumbling like thunder. Curiosity can be cruel. The soldier looked past the puddle to glimpse what seemed to six circles. Six smoldering, scarlet circles. They spun and settled on the man, attached to a mass of tar fur, above twin rows of dripping teeth. Between which dangled half a human arm.

 _Hellhound_. "Shit, shit, shit," he stuttered, backing away.

"How quaint. A welcoming committee."

It was a deep voice. A charming voice. Pleasing to the ear.

And terribly, terribly cold.

The soldier stumbled and fell on his bottom, and his rifle slipped from his grasp and clattered against another gun that was identical but for the smear of red. Overhead, a cloud floated before the moon and darkened his surroundings. There was a towering figure beyond, a specter, his face obscured by his hair. The hound swallowed the arm in one gulp and turned on his heels.

"W-wh-who are you?"

The figure tutted. "Two days and already people have forgotten about me. I must have not made a very lasting impression."

The cloud went on its voyage.

He laid a hand on the hound's bloodstained coat. There was laughter in his tone. "You know who I am."

The moon shone once more.

In its glow, as the breeze swept aside curls of ebony black, the soldier saw, and he knew. From the skittering shadows. The smile full of teeth. The snow white skin.

The blood red eyes.

"You're D—"

That was as far as he got.

Alucard laughed.

"A beautiful night."

xx

… _.I have been reborn._

xx

xx

xx

xx

* * *

NOTES

Enfer - Hell

"The Rose of Midnight" by Vachel Lindsay.

The really wonderful thing about fairy tales is that their settings are so vague. "Once upon a time, in a land far, far away." It doesn't get much freer than that.

There are only few chapters left now, two or three I believe, depending on my pacing. Then there will be the epilogue, an afterword, and after that a bonus chapter covering how Pip and Seras fell in love. And maybe some more bonus chapters in the future if I ever feel like expanding on this universe? I will be busy with _Satis_ by then, but as usual, we'll see.

Everyone, thank you so much for your kind attention! You guys are simply the best!

 


	18. XVII

xx

**17**

xx

He was hungry, so very hungry.

The hunger was an itch under his skin. It was a throb in his sharpened teeth. His tongue protruded from his open mouth and ran over them. It prodded an eye tooth, and bled. His lips pursed as his own essence wetted his taste buds before coagulating.

An eye tooth was also called a dog tooth, and he suppressed another bout of laughter as the actual, infernal dog at his feet leapt forward and pounced on the head that had fallen with a squelch on the tainted snow. He never deigned to give his victims a second glance, but in this instance the image made his lips curl. A head in a pool of blood—a stopper in a bottle of carnal desires. And in his case, it was _frothing._

And _itching._

Restless, he reached into his shirt and pulled apart the bandage Integra had wrapped around his chest. The wound there had healed. No need for its confinement.

The pieces floated away in the breeze. "No, no need at all."

To the hound he said, "What an appetite you have."

He could smell that it was coarse. He had but one taste of blood and already he was quite the epicure. Yet it had been _Integra's_ blood. He had anticipated it would spoil him dreadfully. The flavor, not unlike her scent, lingered in his mouth still, and made him reluctant to drink anything else, much less the remnant of some cloddish soldier.

_Ah, but flavor is not the only problem here, is it?_

The last shred of humanity he had remaining—this ponderously slow beat in his heart, this presence of mind—was stretched as thin as floss and liable to break any minute. There was no sense in retaining it. _And yet_... He stared at his hands. If it broke, if he stooped down and took his fill, until the heart shuddered and shriveled, what would be left? Would it not be bringing himself down to the same level as his dog, a scavenging glutton, eager to lap up whatever scraps was available?

_Itching, aching, throbbing!_

His hands tensed. Oh, he was so very hungry. It was getting worse and worse. Integra's blood had been nourishing but it had not been enough. It had been enlightening in the worst of ways. He wanted...he wanted to...the liquid underfoot did not seem so unappealing now. It was a lovely shade of red against the snow. If he could take...just...one...

 _"Alucard!"_ he heard from a distance.

Alucard snapped out of his trance. Slowly, he breathed.

The moon was a perfect white disk. How entrancing, as it had been that night. Presaging a night for witchery, for madness, for bloodshed. A strange smile formed on his lips. He snatched up the rifles and headed back to the rendezvous.

There, at the edge of the forest, awaited his Integra, a frazzled married couple, and half a cottage.

"Ah fuck," Pip Bernadotte was groaning, squatting on a pile of debris with a palm plastered to his face. "Fucking hell."

"Well done, mercenary," Alucard drawled. "The racket you made has already dragged in two men."

"Are you shitting me? Look what's happened to our fucking house!"

"Only a part of the house, Pip," Seras attempted to allay, with all the optimism she could possibly muster in a lifetime. "We can fix it up. And, uh," she surveyed the wreckage nervously, "at least we're alive..."

Pip groaned again.

She rubbed his back. "Come on, you goose. We're lucky we weren't in there when it happened. Besides, it was only supposed to be our honeymoon cottage. We were going to move anyway."

"Don't you see, Mignonette? They've leveled our house, next thing you know they're dragging us both down to hell."

Alucard scoffed. "Prone to drama, are we?"

" _Casse-toi_."

Seras frowned. "But I should ask, Your Highness, did you know what would happen?"

He had to hand it to the girl. She was getting bolder. "Theoretically."

Pip jumped up. " _Theoretically?_ What, so we were your fucking _rats de laboratoire?"_

Alucard regarded him coldly. "Are you blind in the other eye as well, or has it conveniently escaped you that Integra and I were alongside? There were no risks involved in that mode of travel. The house was merely a miscalculation."

His little experiment with his shadows had hinged on his instinctive understanding of them, which revolved around the irrefutable truth that shadows were everywhere. In the dark of the mind, in the crevices of dreams, beneath the sole, behind walls. Where the sun could not reach, where light was absent, darkness would thrive. And he, its master, who shaped it to his whim, who had wandered once as the darkest wraith, knew his way around its web.

He could emerge into the shade of sleep, and the first time it happened, she had not been too surprised to see him. _"Good evening, Alucard. Come to hassle me in my dreams at last?"_

"She says it so bitingly, yet I know she is joyed to see me." He had kissed Integra on her unimpassioned cheek.

_"You just can't bear to leave me in peace for one moment, can you? Well then, how are you here?"_

" _Pulvis et umbra sumus,_ " he had quoted.

We are but dust and shadow.

The ex-mercenary's voice grated on his ears in reality. "Some miscalculation."

Alucard threw one of the rifles at him with unnecessary force and Pip stumbled to catch it. "You insinuate that I'd put Integra at risk. I'm starting to think you're not fond of your tongue." He grinned insidiously and made a snipping motion with his fingers. "I can take care of it if you want."

Seras squeaked. Pip just eyed him wearily. "God-fucking-damn, you are one sick bastard."

"It comes with the territory," Alucard simpered. He turned toward where Integra stood waiting for him. "Cease your whining and make yourself useful. A night of revelry is about to begin."

"Where there's _sang_ instead of _vin_. _Fantastique._ We always did have the worst luck." But he sat back down and proceeded to check the gun's ammunition.

Integra was leaning against a tree, surveying the castle. There was impatience in her demeanor, at herself and at him, obviously. When he neared, her gaze switched to him and he almost keened. It _hurt_ to look at her. With that bit of crimson on her shirt, she had inoculated him with nothing but thoughts of her, his glorious Faerie Queene crowned in blood! The hue of his irises curdled greedily. It had been worth it, all worth it—even with this hunger gnawing at him, even with the entirety of his being reduced to dust and shadow, it had been worth it to see her this way with his own two eyes.

It took a second for him to realize her lips were moving.

Oh, she was asking about the dog food. "They were Wilhelmina's men, I could tell from the identical brand of stupidity on their faces." He tossed her the bloodstained rifle. "At least they had their uses. The more rounds the merrier, my Integra. Just like old times."

Integra caught it with one hand and examined it. "Good. My pistol was running out." She propped it against the tree and when she turned to him, she let out a snort.

"What?"

"Your hair is acting up."

Alucard blinked. Now that she mentioned it, he could feel a vague tugging sensation on his scalp. Integra raised a hand to his locks and laughed softly when they coiled themselves around her fingers.

"What a nuisance," he said.

"They're perfect little extensions of you," she commented. "Greedy, clingy blighters."

He joined her under the tree. "You know me so well," he purred, and they captured each other's eyes, blue and red flames burning in earnest.

She was the pragmatic one, as usual. "Something must have happened to Walter."

"It seems there has been yet another shift in politics during your absence, my Integra. Frankly, I'm not surprised, at his age." She looked affronted on Walter's behalf. He shrugged. "All the better for me. I have my very own playground." He relished this. The thought of bloodshed aroused him like it had never before. His hair slithered suggestively over her skin.

Integra shook them off, and laid the hand on his cheek. He cooed at her touch.

"Are you alright?" she asked, shrewdly.

_Oh, Integra, I am so very hungry._

What came out was, "Are you?"

"I'm fine," Integra said, in much the same tone as earlier. "The tea helped. But I'm asking _you_."

Alucard smiled. "Why wouldn't I be?"

Her eyes behind her glasses were hooded, and they closed briefly when he trapped her hand and claimed it with kisses. He had seen something fragile on her face and wanted it gone.

His Integra put up a steel front, but she was not fooling anyone. Truly, he was both in awe of her and frustrated with her beyond measure. He could never expect her to act like some delicate damsel, but for once, just this once, could she not put herself first? She was no doubt forcing her body to outperform by sheer will power. Obstinate woman! It was the man's urge _and_ the monster's to lock her away…yet she was not only his lady, she was also his knight. She would fight him on this, and where would that leave them other than with her further depleted?

Blood would paint the snow red; he would spill theirs for hers.

He hummed inwardly. _Blood for blood?_

_There is an idea._

Alucard led her out into the moonlight. She gave him a questioning expression, which morphed into a scowl when he placed his other hand on her waist and turned them gently on the snow.

"Alucard!" she hissed. "Now is not the time for this!"

"On the eve of battle, passions arise. Indulge me," he said, swaying them.

"Isn't that what I always do?"

Alucard's laughter, the same laughter that chilled the hearts of many but warmed hers, hailed the night.

He brought them to a stop. Integra took a breath to berate him, which got stuck in her throat when he kissed her.

The breath she had just taken escaped her parted lips and his tongue darted in, caressing hers, and for a moment she was lost in the sensation—until she thought she tasted something foreign.

She jerked back.

"Did you just...?"

Alucard merely smiled. "Something wrong?"

She thought she saw a gleam in his red orbs, yet it was fleeting, and so was the taste in her mouth. Integra narrowed her eyes. "You—"

"It was a night like this, do you remember?"

"Alucard—"

He knelt before her. He held her hands as if they were his lifelines and she could feel the undercurrent of chaos in his joints. His unfettered eyes devoured her figure, and she imagined the embers of hell crackling in their depths. Her inquisition died in her throat.

"The night I swore fealty to you. You were to be my knight and I yours. We danced on the blood of those who had wronged you and my shadows sang your name."

Integra sighed tiredly. "You're remembering it wrong."

"But they did! And they will tonight. Tonight our roles are reversed. You will be my liege and I will be your knight. Listen for them, my regina! Listen for them singing your name."

_Integra! Integra!_

"This is your kingdom, Alucard, not mine."

"You misunderstand me," Alucard said. "This isn't about some plot of land where stands a decrepit edifice I've always hated or some title that's never held any meaning. It's about _you_. Don't you see?" He squeezed her hands to his icy cheeks. "I never would have wanted to be king if it weren't for you." He squeezed them hard, as though he wanted her to melt them.

Integra closed her eyes. "This coming from the man who so desired to make me his queen."

"You have always been my queen, my Integra," he said.

Her blue diamonds peeked at him from under her lashes. "And you have always been my king. I simply wanted you wearing your rightful crown."

"And I wanted you at my side wearing yours. Yet we neither require nor desire such superficialities now."

"How foolish we have been then," she mused, "trying to make kings and queens out of each other when neither of us wanted or needed such titles."

"We are once again a pair of disillusioned children in a gingerbread house, where we must throw the witch into the fire and burn down the confectionery in the process. But my Integra, don't get me wrong." Alucard rotated his head and his tongue ran over the prominent blue vein in her palm. He stared up at her, intoxicated, above their entwined fingers as his voice came out muffled. "I still desire to make you queen. Just not of this realm."

Her lips twisted at his insinuation.

"Well then, you'll have to try hard to convince me, won't you?"

"Oh, I will," he crooned.

There were gunshots from the front.

"Eh, hate to interrupt your _liaison amoureuse_ ," Pip said, approaching them, "but I think that's our cue."

Alucard gazed up at Integra. He loosened one hand yet held fast the other, the one he had poured his ardor. "Shall I now uphold my solemn promise and wage perdition, my lady Hellsing?"

Integra looked shrewdly at him again. Little escaped her; she knew he did _something_ but she would have to upbraid him another time. Perhaps she was even sensing this hunger of his, this hunger for the blood he could hear babbling musically in her veins. He could only describe it as crippling, though he knew it would rather serve as crude fuel for the inferno he was about to unleash.

She pulled him to his feet. She stepped into the shadow cast by his formidable height.

"You will come back to me."

It was not a question or a plea. It was an order.

His red eyes crinkled. "As you will come back to me."

She smiled.

Seras came up. "Sir, I can't find Baskervi—eek! Sorry!"

They ignored her.

"Go inside and collect your retainer, my Nero," Alucard said. "Pluck your strings as outside I ignite the funeral pyre."

"Don't be too literal about it. Fires are impossible to clean up after," Integra said.

Seras laughed nervously.

Pip lit a cigarette. "You guys are fucked up, I swear to God."

xx

xx

"Doesn't she look...different?"

"You think so, too? She's positively glowing!"

"Maybe it's the tea?"

"I gave her yellow dock tea, Pip, not the elixir of life."

"I can hear you, you know," Integra snapped.

She would be lying if the whole situation did not irk her.

"We were just saying how well you look, Sir Integral!" Seras reassured.

What was there _not_ to be irked about?

It was not in Integra's nature to regret her decisions. Once they were made, they were rarely changed, and whether their outcomes were good or bad, she took responsibility. Hence, Alucard was her responsibility, as were the two civilians she was currently leading on a quest for her missing butler, and as for this sudden vitality coursing through her—

Well, that had not been _her_ decision, had it? So how the hell was she supposed to be responsible for it?

"I'm going to murder him," she snarled.

Her two companions did not argue the likelihood.

They crept along the west wall of the castle toward the servant's entrance. So far they had encountered no one. It appeared orders had been given to all for a concentrated attack on the beasts. That was rather desperate of the Queen. Beneath her indignation she admitted to being worried over Alucard, yet if this newfound strength of hers was any indication—

Integra kicked the door open.

The wood bounced off the inside wall with a dent in its middle.

"Merde." Pip gaped. "Did the man leave you unsatisfied?"

"PIP!"

Integra marched in without acknowledging them and swept her eyes around the dark, deserted and narrow entrance. There was a metal gate up ahead that barred the stairs. She strode over to it and saw it was locked.

Pip, bringing up the rear, struck a match and lit a sconce. "You going to kick that, too?"

She glared at him.

"Bastards sure paid attention to details before they ran." Pip avoided her glare and crouched down, eye level with the lock. "I can work this out. Give me a few minutes." He flipped his auburn braid and from its end produced a needle.

Integra raised a brow. "You have needles in your hair?"

Beside her, Seras blushed. Pip maneuvered the needle into the lock. " _Oui_. Mignonette uses it as a pincushion when she sews."

"Charming." Integra crossed her arms and leaned against the wall. There was a grating restlessness within her, the same as his. This was her comeuppance. Alucard, that incorrigible _sneaky_ wretch! She was going to knock his teeth out when this was over.

She itched for a cigar, but missing it, she tried to distract herself with the next nagging concern. In the dimly lit space her gaze fell to Seras Victoria, the little oddity of their group.

She was the oddity in that she was the only normal person in an impromptu group consisting of a disgruntled lady knight, a French ex-mercenary and, up until a quarter of an hour ago, a monster prince. Seras was younger, shorter, blonder and bluer than Integra—in a cloak and a wool dress, she was the quintessential country girl who had lost her way to grandmother's house. And the oddest thing was that she seemed perfectly fine with this.

Seras caught her gaze. "Sir?"

"Do you know how to shoot?"

There was a bewildered pause. "Um, yes."

"I trust you'll make use of this, then." Integra handed Seras her rifle. "We're entering an arena, Ms. Victoria. You're not going to rush in unarmed, are you?"

"Oh." Seras took the gun uncertainly. "Thank you. Um, but Sir, Pip already gave me his pistol, are you sure you wouldn't rather—"

"I still have a few rounds remaining in mine. Besides, I'm quicker with my sabre." Integra tilted her head. "I thought you were a skittish little thing, yet you're being surprisingly calm about all this. How unusual for an ordinary housewife."

Seras fidgeted. "Sir Integral—"

"You must understand, Ms. Victoria, that I'm starting to have my doubts. I let you accompany us back at the cottage—"

"Half a cottage," Pip muttered.

"—but at this point, the only reason I've not dropped you off behind some safe boulder is because, puzzlingly enough, neither you nor your husband has had any complaints."

"I won't cause you trouble, Sir, I promise," Seras pleaded.

"That's not what I'm asking."

Pip's voice was soft. "Mignonette, you should tell her."

"I—" Seras bit her lip. She swallowed. "I'm in your debt."

Integra stared. "You're in _my_ debt?"

"It's not exactly—it was—it was a long time ago. I was nine. Your family saved me." Seras looked up at her with beseeching eyes. "Sir, that's all I can say. Give me a chance to tell you after everything's done. Please?"

There was the clang of the gate being unlocked. _"Voilà."_

Integra, who knew grief, who knew fairy tales had happy endings and happy beginnings but seldom happy middles, knew this was a story best told at another time. She smiled gently. "You're my admirer, Seras. I can grant you that."

It was amusing how easily she reddened.

" _Après vous, mesdames_." Pip opened the gate with a flourish. "Normally I'd be called a cad for allowing a lady to lead these dangerous waters, but I'm not stupid. I know I don't stand a chance against you two."

xx

xx

Sir Bradbury, like the rest of his peers, was having a bad day. At least, he thought, the Queen had managed to turn the tables. He had been sorry to see Islands and Penwood go off to the dungeons, but at least he had his head intact.

"Terribly sorry it had to be like this, chaps. I didn't want to be the one to do this, but someone had to make a sensible decision. I'll put in a good word for you with the Queen once all this is settled."

To which Penwood had said, "Go bugger yourself, Harold."

Sir Harold Bradbury anticipated a brand new day, when he would be made leader of the Round Table by the order of the Queen. He would then prune the branches, so to speak, starting with Hellsing and the unfortunate state dear old Arthur had left it in. Bequeathing the organization to an impressionable little girl, what was he thinking? Richard would have been a better choice. If it had not been for his untimely death...

He was striding through the upturned west wing of the castle toward the entrance hall with three of his guards. The Queen had commanded a full-scale offensive against the creatures of the night. His mustache twitched as he recalled a certain rumor that had been circulating about, of the prince being the reason for the lack of monsters during the past two decades. Now that he was dead—so the Queen had declared—Bradbury was afraid there would be no end to these onslaughts.

Yet another rumor was emerging...of the prince being alive.

_"Don't come to me, the young woman with personal ties to the prince whose family has killed monsters for generations, when the arrow of blame circles around and points to your heads..."_

Integral Hellsing's lethal voice echoed in his ears and his mustache gave another involuntary twitch. Preposterous! He did not even know if Integral herself was alive. Arrow of blame, indeed. What clout did she have now to carry out the threat, with the prince gone and the knights imprisoned?

There was a loud _thwack_ and a shout behind him and Bradbury swiveled around to see one of his men lying unconscious on the floor. There stood a young woman with short blonde hair, who was holding a rifle above her head.

She perspired when all eyes zeroed in on her. "Uh..."

Sir Bradbury whipped out his pistol and his two guards aimed their weapons at the girl. "Who in blazes are you?"

But then there were shots from the side, and his remaining men went down with screams.

"Jameson! Biggs!" Sir Bradbury brandished his pistol toward the direction of the shots. "Damn it all to blazes! Who are you people!"

A man with a braid and an eye patch trudged into view. A cigarette was smoking in his mouth. "Sorry," he said, not sounding sorry in the least. "I don't take kindly to people messing with ma chère."

"Who are you?" Bradbury demanded. "Who's sent you?"

"An ex-mercenary who's temporarily brought himself out of retirement. And you, connard?"

"I beg your pardon! You're speaking to a knight of the Round Table!" Bradbury squawked.

"What a coincidence. My boss is a knight, too."

"A knight? Who?"

A voice Sir Bradbury had not expected to hear again drawled behind him. "Me."

Sir Integral Hellsing had her sabre drawn. She pushed her glasses up with its tip. "Sir Bradbury. Fancy meeting you here. How are the others? Sir Islands? Sir Penwood? Sir Walsh? Oh, how could I forget. You traded them in for your own wealth and power."

"Sir Hellsing." Bradbury's face contorted. "Alive, and with reinforcements, I see. Let's not call the kettle black, Integral. Can you blame me for trying to save the kingdom from the clutches of a prince who was not even human? You _consorted_ with that demon, wanting the same piece of cake as I did!"

"Saving the kingdom," Integra mocked. "Did you tell yourself that when you took everything from a child who already had nothing? You've never been fond of me, and no wonder. How distressing it must have been, when after years of embezzlement, a _Hellsing_ just happened to befriend the prince. The same piece of cake? Believe what you want, your pathetic follies are not worth my concern. But believe this." Her lips curved into a savage grin. "He's here."

Screams erupted outside as if to punctuate her announcement.

Sir Bradbury reacted by firing his pistol at her.

Integra dodged the bullet, and with a swipe of her sabre disarmed the man, right as Seras jammed the butt of her rifle into his gut. Bradbury went sprawling face first to the floor.

"We just want to ask a question, mister," Seras said cheerily, which belied the way she had her gun trained on his temple.

Pip plopped down on Bradbury's back and the man emitted a piglike squeal. "That's right. We only want one thing from you." He casually dug into a coat pocket and whistled. "Or two." He removed a fat cigar from a tin. "It's your lucky day, boss. Your vice."

"You're starting to grow on me, Mr. Bernadotte," Integra praised. She lit the cigar and took a deep, deep, _deep_ drag, and when she finally blew, the smoke colored the air with sulphurous, sinuous vindication. "Now, Harold. Let's not draw this out. Where's Walter?"

xx

xx

xx

xx

* * *

NOTES

Casse-toi – Fuck off

Rats de laboratoire – Lab rats

Sang - Blood

Vin - Wine

Liaison amoureuse – Love affair

Après vous, mesdames – After you, ladies

"Pulvis et umbra sumus (We are but dust and shadow)" is a quote by Horace.

I was literally eating a piece of cake.

_Thank you always!_


	19. XVIII

xx

**18**

xx

The affairs of kings and queens are said to be a giant chess game, and it was the intention of the king of monsters to paint its board entirely in red by the time he reached the opposite end. His eyes were lurid and his lips were smiling. It was a terrible smile, a deathly smile. At the sight of it—

There was a sickening crunch. Blood rained down on the snow.

"Tonight..."

He spoke. His voice was gravelly. At the sound of it—

"...all of you will die."

The pawns on the chessboard screamed.

xx

xx

For her twelfth birthday Alucard wove Integra a crown of roses.

When he placed it on her, he neglected to mention that he had bled on its petals.

The thorns of his roses were sharp, after all.

He had never been a rich prince. There were no piles of treasure from which he could pick out a gift for his fair maiden. The Queen pilfered from his vault, and more and more rocks adorned her fingers. He sneered at them, at her. She was overcompensating for the precariousness of her life within his clutches.

So it was often that he found himself having nothing but his own two hands, and it was with these cold, bloodied, murderous hands that he mimicked creation. He grew his roses. He crafted her crown. He played his shadows for her. And Integra, who had little patience for jewelry, who treasured instead these humble offerings, took his hands in hers. "What more can these hands do? Tell me."

"Kill for you," he had whispered. "Bleed for you. Tear apart anyone, anything that stands in your way."

"My, what big hands you have."

He had grown quickly out of his dainty hands. He had not wanted to remain the frail, sobbing child huddled in a chair. Because she was his ideal, it was only fair that he become her ideal, thus he had been her beautiful prince, her chivalrous knight, her flirtatious suitor. At last, he would have been king...yet of this realm, this _mortal_ realm, he was not meant to be. Alucard was Dracula, and Dracula was a—

_"Monster!"_

"Yes, but you were aware of that, Thomas," Alucard said.

It had been half an hour since he had left Integra. He missed her already.

His glee at having his own playground had lasted all of ten minutes until it became nauseatingly apparent that these beasties—unfit to be called monsters, really—were not going to put up a fight. They were simply terrified of him, and the instant he entered the field they had collapsed like dominoes, trampling one another, trying to run for the forest. They should have known better.

Never tickle a dragon, sleeping or not.

"This is child's play," he had complained. His fingertips had smashed the skull of a gargoyle and its gore had streaked the sleeve of his borrowed white shirt. He threw it down. Where were the soldiers? Listening to them beg for their lives would be at least of _some_ entertainment.

His hellhound, who was proving to be ever faithful, had bounded into view then, the neck of a foot soldier clamped between his jaws.

"And where have you been? Having fun without me?"

Baskerville had dropped his snack and barked. His tail wagging jauntily, he had disappeared into the hedges of the front gardens. Alucard's lips had curled.

Baskerville was a _very_ good dog.

"This is why you keep a hunting dog," Alucard said conversationally to the sniveling lump beneath his boot.

He was slouched against a hedge, the picture of leisure, _Samiel_ taking a break in the middle of his carnage.

"He flushes the birds, saving time, effort and," he ground his heel harder into the ribs, earning a howl, "knowing very well his master would like to pluck this one himself. Don't you agree, Thomas Seymour, second son of the Duke of Somerton?"

The oafish noble, who had survived to this point solely because Integra had willed it, whimpered pathetically in the snow. Around him were his guards, dead. The Black Huntsman had descended from the shadows and reaped their souls.

"Please, please, Your Highness, I beg of you!"

Alucard leaned forward, pushing his weight onto his bent knee. Thomas' vision was engulfed in the same acidic pigment he had secretly had nightmares about for years. Before him its pools curved into sickles. "Oh, it's 'Your Highness' now, is it? You did have the irritating tendency to switch manners according to the venue. I seem to recall you having a few choice words for me in a different garden. What were they again?"

A part of Thomas Seymour, sequestered behind a bloated sense of self-importance and swagger, had always known that he had barely escaped being turned into compost that day in that godforsaken garden. And when the Queen had summoned him and screamed that they had been tricked, _tricked!_ He knew.

He had signed, folded and sealed his death warrant following through a casual suggestion made by a man with a monocle.

"I was young and didn't know better, Your Highness—no, Your _Majesty!"_

Alucard hummed.

Thomas interpreted it as consideration and immediately turned his coat. "Your Majesty, I've nothing but the utmost respect for your rightful crown," he wheezed, lying through his teeth. The opportunist had no loyalties. "The Queen, she led me to this! I can tell you everything—the extermination, it's just a cover! She's ordered me to secure a way out. She's going to run!"

Alucard chuckled. "Is she now? And without so much as a by-your-leave." He removed his foot from the ribs. Thomas breathed easier.

Like all desperate fools, he started to hope.

It was a mistake.

"You were young and didn't know better." The monster king cocked his head to the side. "Should I grant you mercy?"

"Mercy, _mercy,_ Your Majesty!"

He smiled. "If insulting me had been your sole offense."

Thomas Seymour, despite his lumbering gait, was an opportunist, and an opportunist could not afford to be slow. It did not take him long to realize what he was talking about.

"Y-your M-majesty," he stuttered.

"Monster, freak, demon...what do I care?" His eyes reflected hell. "They're true. But as a hunter you should have had better aim, Thomas." His voice was very, very quiet. "The verdict of life and death is but a stone's throw away."

"Your Majesty, surely you remember! I didn't mean to! I didn't mean to hit Integral H—"

Hell blazed.

Alucard stamped down and crushed the bones in Thomas' right arm.

He screamed, or he would have, had Alucard not brought the same foot down on his mouth.

"Little puppet, you do not get to say her name."

His other foot pedaled the mutilated appendage to the tune of strangulated screams. "It was this arm here that wronged my Integra. And if I am not mistaken, it was this leg here..."

The leg in question was splintered.

His smile was the Devil's and it was beatific, for it was the smile he wore before his fall. It was a smile that charmed, a smile that lured and _oh, don't get close, too close, he will eat you up! Ah, too late._ "Dear, dear. I guess your toe is the least of your problems now. Honestly, she can be so conservative. She should have let me kill you _much_ sooner."

Even as he lay in the red, red snow, delirious with pain, Thomas thought its chill could not compare to the coldness coming from above. Colder than ice, colder than the winter wind, his breath...

"After all, what is one noble's son, more or less?"

Screams did fill the air this time.

A group of soldiers broke through the hedges. "Who's there?"

There was no answer except the final stirrings of a body notably missing an arm and the low laughter of the red and black mass looming over it. The soldiers stared, and some of them crossed their hearts, for they were received in audience by the Devil.

Then their fight or flight response kicked in. Stupidly, they chose to fight. "Shoot him!"

Shots were fired, but they were lead bullets. They embedded themselves in various parts of his body, but not his heart. Pity, they should have consulted Sir Hellsing.

He toppled to the ground in an imitation of death. As the men let out gasps of relief, the moon played hide-and-seek behind a growing number of clouds, and the shadows rose to its countdown. Fingers danced on the slush.

"This is interesting, indeed."

_Blood, the currency of life—_

A soldier started. "What the fuck—"

Baskerville dived into the foray and proceeded to ravage those in the rear, while the hapless soul who had cursed out loud witnessed their foe sit up and dust himself off, as if he had suffered nothing more than a minor bout of narcolepsy. His moment of horrified astonishment expired with a scream when a black tendril skewered his stomach.

The undead man blinked down at his drenched shirt.

"Ah," Alucard said. "She will be furious with me."

xx

xx

Integra sneezed.

"Gesundheit," Pip said.

She looked at him. "You're _French_."

He shrugged. " _À tes souhaits?"_

"It must be the dust in the air," Seras said.

They were climbing up the stairs to the Queen's apartments, where Sir Bradbury had confessed Walter was being held. Other than a few cuts and bruises from the couple of skirmishes they had engaged in, the trio was fine. Seras was as curious as ever. The upper stories of the castle were largely intact and never before had she seen such extravagance. Gold-threaded upholstery, silk wallpaper and God, were those real crystal chandeliers? Her cornflower blue eyes strayed past the balustrade to the nearest suspended chandelier, and saw their reflections warped on the facets.

"This place must have been very beautiful."

Ahead of her, Integra quirked her lips. "I suppose, if you have a taste for the baroque."

"I don't think I'm familiar with that, Sir."

"Baroque, the style of excessive ornamentation, dramatization and, as I would say, self-gratification." Integra spared a disdainful glance at the decor. "I always thought that all I had to do was peel the paper off and I would see the mold and decay underneath."

At her words Seras took a closer look. She did not have an eye for these things, but under her scrutiny the walls seemed to be straining. The carpets seemed to be groaning. The crystals in the chandelier seemed disturbingly sharp.

"Alucard and I hated this place. We were fools to think we could make it work."

They turned right.

Seras stared at Integra as she followed, at her enviably long hair and straight back, and stood by her observation that the knight was positively glowing in a way that certainly did not befit someone who had lost quite an amount of blood barely an hour ago. She had an inkling that the prince had done something.

"Vampire," Pip had said back at the cottage. "Mignonette, this is bad. I know you try to see the good in everything, but coming from rural France I grew up listening to weird shit and you know what? They said that vampires were extinct, but they also said that they were the crème de la crème when it came to damnability. _Monstre de monstres_. There's no turning back on this one."

But was it so bad? She watched the tail of Integra's coat flutter. The prince obviously loved his knight. Seras was a dreamer and a romantic and she believed anything capable of love had a soul, and anything that had a soul was redeemable.

"Mignonette? You alright?"

"Huh?" Seras blinked.

They had stopped in front of a pair of double doors with ivory handles.

"Hey." Pip cupped her cheek. "Don't go spacing out on me now. I need ma chère with me. She's the only sane person here."

Seras rubbed his hand. "Oh, Pip. You're not mad."

"I wouldn't be too sure about that," Integra said wryly. "We're all mad here." And with that, she barged in.

The chamber was lit. One look around confirmed it was vacant. Integra was a trifle put out. She circled the room, her eyes missing nothing. Drawers open, jewelry gone, chairs toppled over in haste, vases broken, mirror on the floor...she dipped a finger in an almost full cup of tea on a table and found it lukewarm. A growl escaped her. That bloody, cowardly—

"You would think," Pip said, examining a bottle of claret, "that someone taking flight would remember to grab the booze. Nothing like drinking on the run."

Integra gritted her teeth. "Outside is Alucard. She won't get far."

"I should probably pity her, but eh. Anyone who sticks ivory on a fucking pair of doors is bound to be an ass."

"What's this?" Seras asked, peering at the carpet where a powdery substance was strewn. Pip went over to her and squatted down, taking a pinch and rubbing it between his forefinger and thumb. He brought it to his nose, sniffed carefully, and at once blew it out.

"Fuck." He shot up and shielded Seras from the powder. "Don't touch that."

"What is it?" Integra demanded.

" _La petite mort_ ," Pip said grimly. "And I am not talking about the enjoyable kind."

 _Walter_. Integra moved quickly, kicking the doors to the adjoining rooms nearly off their hinges, their locks notwithstanding, and in a side chamber discovered her butler tied to a chair.

"Walter!" She was before him, severing the ropes and taking him by the shoulders. Her surrogate father, he felt so slight under her hands. When had he gotten so old? Integra shook, and she shook him with her. "Walter, I'm going to tease you about this for years. Wake up!"

"It's going to take a whole lot of time for him to get rid of that drug," Pip informed her quietly. "Only thing we can do is move him somewhere comfortable and wait it out."

Integra gazed down at Walter's wrinkled face. At length she pushed him toward Pip, and the mercenary, understanding, hefted him up and laid him on a chaise.

Seras stayed beside her. "Sir Integral."

Integra had dropped her sabre after cutting the ropes. She picked it up now, its weight and coolness desensitizing her, yet the torrential rage within her heart was not to be outdone.

She fished out a cigar. She clenched it.

_Judgment Day, my Integra._

"Alucard had better uphold his promise."

If he was going to chop off her fingers, maybe she could ask to keep one as a souvenir.

xx

xx

He felt rage in his heart.

But it was not his. Or perhaps it was his, only it was his hunger, blown so out of proportion that it manifested itself as rage.

Or perhaps it was hers.

Blood. What a riddle it was. It granted. It enticed. It awakened and entwined. Blood he had been born from, blood he had denied, blood he had taken and given. For he had linked them intricately with that kiss, he could feel her as he would hear her voice from across a bay. She was angry and her anger was a captivating thing.

True beauty was not a face like his that was a mask hiding monstrosity. No. True beauty was the capitulation of that monstrosity, given meaning and purpose. In her hands he blossomed, he grew thorns and sprouted yet never unchecked. He grew into a garden of her vision.

For cosmos cannot be without chaos.

"So even if I shatter into a million pieces due to this hunger of mine, she will collect me and rebuild me again, as she had done on this day and that winter afternoon."

Alucard stood with his form shaking in the coppery breeze. The itch, the throb in his being was insurmountable. He would _have_ to drink now.

And he knew just the right kind of sacrifice.

He spared nary a glance for the blood pooled in his vicinity and made use of his tangible shadows. The body of Thomas Seymour slithered upright, animated by the most unorthodox of strings. Alucard wriggled his fingers and a grin split his visage when the arms flailed accordingly.

"A puppet is reusable as long as it has its strings."

His trap set, the huntsman waited. What a lovely night, almost rivaling the one he had spent with Integra under the stars. The smile on his face became brittle, and he wrapped an arm around his abdomen. _Ah, so very hungry_.

 _The Gorgon's head, a ghastly sight, deformed and dreadful, and a sign of woe_...

"I rather think they're talking about me," he laughed. "But I far surpass a head of snakes. Now, let's see. How long until mother dearest comes this way?"

He could wait. He had all the time in the world.

xx

xx

Integra swept a hand over Walter's forehead, then walked out of the chamber, leaving Seras and Pip with him. They watched her with concerned eyes but knew to give her space. She was grateful. They were good people, Seras and Pip. Meeting them was the only positive thing to come out of this mess.

In the main room, puffing on her cigar, she scanned the assortment of ornate knickknacks once more and sneered. This was it. This was fucking it. She did not need to peel off the paper to see the decay because that very decay was right here, in this very room, in this years' and years' worth of witchery and vanity and greed.

She booted aside an empty chest and combed her hair with her fingers in agitation.

_"Enter the catalyst."_

Integra stiffened.

She dropped her hand to the hilt of her sabre. Had she not just heard a voice?

_"Over here, meine Fräulein."_

It sounded, oddly enough, like it was coming from below. It also sounded, oddly enough, inhuman—metallic, if a voice could be described as such.

It also had a German accent. Integra sincerely hoped Alucard's blood did not have hallucinatory effects.

_"Mind your step, Fräulein, and come over here."_

She looked down.

There was a mirror. It was a rotund mirror, short and squat, set in an ivory frame studded with topaz. It lay on the floor with a crack in its glass, by all appearances abandoned. For a second Integra saw her reflection in it, steel blue eyes gazing down at the jagged line.

Then the mirror chortled. "We meet at last, Sir Integral Fairbrook Wingates Hellsing!"

Integra stepped back. "A talking mirror. Now I have seen everything."

"I must say, meine Fräulein, you are even more magnificent in person. A countenance which behooves the most important piece in this game."

"A sycophantic mirror, no less." With her right hand Integra removed her cigar, and with her left drew her pistol and deliberately took aim. "Why am I not surprised. I did wonder how an idiot like Queen Wilhelmina managed to concoct half the plans she got away with, and here is the answer. A brain...in the form of a looking-glass."

"I have watched, meine Fräulein. I have watched you and your beloved Schneewittchen grow up to be a beautiful, clever woman and beautiful, clever man, and you will agree when I say that not all humans are blessed with a brain. Those who find themselves lacking, seek someone or some _thing_ with the right amount of wisdom and the right amount of prostration, and in time they think themselves the master of all it knows."

Integra kept her arm steady. "I see the Queen has had a wake-up call on that."

"We have had a disagreement," said the mirror.

"Because you lied. You told her Alucard was dead."

"I did not lie," said the mirror. "I do not lie. The enchantment on me prohibits the speaking of untruths. Yet of course," it added with an obnoxious lilt, "there are many facets to a truth. You cannot blame me for choosing to polish one brighter than the other. I told her Schneewittchen was dead because he _was_ dead. Those once dead remain within the shadow of death even after their resurrection." The mirror had no facial features whatsoever, but if it did, it would have been sporting an oily grin. "It has ever amused me how humans take one suggestion, one single, simple word, and interpret it into an entire cosmos."

"The Devil's tool you are," Integra remarked. "You played her for a fool. Why?"

"I am an old mirror, Fräulein, and when you are as old as me, you find that some qualities stay while others fade. I have had many masters come and go, seen them die in ludicrous ways, witnessed the rise and fall of countless kingdoms and empires. And each time, do you know what it was that entertained me the most? The faces. Of those men and women who believed themselves superior. As they approach their last hour, they look into my glass. They weep and scream and plead for a chance. And I cannot help but lament, is this what humanity has to offer? I, a mirror, an inanimate, inorganic object, am more human than they."

Integra tightened her grip on her gun.

"Your pistol, it is loaded with silver bullets, is it not? They will no doubt fly straight and true and wreck me beyond repair. I anticipate it even, because it is you, Integral Hellsing! You and Schneewittchen—your _Alucard_ —you were the respite from my lamentation! A _vampire_ after centuries of extinction, what a delight he was. I let _die liebe Königin_ feed him poison—" Integra nearly pulled the trigger, "—for I desired to see him as the unliving monster he was destined to be, wreaking havoc with his bloodlust. But."

She was strangling her cigar. " _But?"_

"You. The catalyst—and the restrainer. You anchored him. Integral Hellsing, how did you do it? How did you tame the monster? How did he not drain you? In his state he should have."

She inclined her head. "By asking that, you've proved yourself a mere, inferior, object."

"Oh?"

Integra tossed her mangled cigar to the floor. "The weeping and pleading of your late masters, those are what you think makes them less? It seems the years have been wasted on you, mirror." Her eyes hardened. "Those are what make us human."

_Integra, Integra!_

"There will always be a shred of humanity left in those who can shed tears. And Alucard—"

She remembered his screams, his tears, his blood red tears, and she remembered, _please go away please sit down please forgive me Integra, Integra, my Integra!_

"Monstrosity...is the exaggeration of humanity," she whispered. "It can be the exaggeration of love."

The mirror chuckled. "Love, is it? Perhaps you have a point. I have never understood this emotion which you humans call love."

"Which is why you're too dangerous an object to be left lying around." Integra pulled the trigger halfway.

"I regret that I cannot see your legacy through, Integral Hellsing," said the mirror. "The vampire you have awakened, with his hunger and lust and perpetuity, will you be enough to bridle him across oceans of time and space? Are you ready to face the consequences? Will you not fall after him?"

"I already have."

She fired.

The mirror shattered, hemorrhaging glittering dust, sending shards everywhere. From among them, a single shard flipped in the air and nicked her skin just below her left eye.

Integra did not blink.

"Sir Integral!" Seras sprinted into the room with Pip in tow. "We heard—what happened? Wha—you're bleeding!"

Integra let her now empty pistol slip from her fingers. "I have to go."

"Go? Go where? Sir Integral!"

But she was already running.

xx

xx

The Queen walked quickly. She was dressed in a raggedy robe, hood pulled over her face in an effort to conceal her identity, such as it was when one attempted clandestine escapes at the eleventh hour. Her mind was adrift in an ocean of lies and deceit, where in this instance she was not the water but a boat sinking in its current. Under her garb she clutched a satchel of jewelry which she would use to bribe her way out of the country. She was in no state to bemoan her fate. The mirror could go to hell. She, however, would escape. She _had_ to escape—from him!

"That Thomas Seymour, where is he?" she twittered, looking jerkily around the perimeter of the front gardens. It seemed strangely foreboding. She was not fond of gardens, not since that accursed brat started his. Yet here was the rendezvous, and Thomas was due to secure a carriage. She would take advantage of the chaos that ensued as her men fruitlessly fought the beasts on her orders, and save her own hide.

But it was too quiet.

Perhaps the conflict had relocated. Yes, that might be it, she deluded herself. The receptors in her brain blocked out the curdling dread that threatened to paralyze her limbs and churned out fancies instead.

Where was that limping oaf?

It was then she saw a lantern light ahead. The figure holding it was limping. It could only be Thomas, recovering from the boar incident and the broken toe. In her relief her words came out rapidly. "There you are. Well? Where is the carriage stationed?"

She should have thought it strange. Even though he was holding a lantern, Thomas looked as if he was cloistered in the shadows. She had trouble making out his face. Alas, she was in no condition to dwell on that.

"This way, my Queen," he said, and if he sounded a little off she did not dwell on that either. "This way, to the northeast."

_Dost see not the Erlking, with crown and with train?_

The further they went into the northeastern grounds the harder it was for her mind to reside in the fog. The northeast, the northeast, there was something about that direction. It was the back of the castle, and she disliked thinking about the back of the castle. It was wild and unkempt, full of shrubs and boulders and there was—there was—

"Wait," the Queen said as they ventured through a sloping trail flanked by tall shrubs. "Is this the right path?"

"It is," the figure of Thomas Seymour said, and was she imagining it or was his voice cold, colder than the air about her? "Your Chariot waits around this corner."

They turned the corner.

She dropped her satchel.

Gold spilled out. But even her precious metal could not rip her eyes from—from—

The garden. _The rose garden._

"This..." She choked. "What is the meaning of this?"

_"The rose. The Queen of Flowers."_

"Thomas! _What is the meaning of this?"_

_"Were you afraid you would be next?"_

Thomas collapsed, and she screamed when the shadows that had been puppeteering him dispersed, revealing his deformed corpse. A marionette cut from his strings, he stared up at her with glassy eyes just as the maid had, and the Queen was transported to that fateful day when she had walked in to find her dead, and _him_ alive, _him_ looming over the body with an insane grin on his face and those red, glistening—

"Such a racket. You weren't this hysterical fifteen years ago."

 _He_ was lounging on a stone bench that was dwarfed by his long limbs stretched out in front of him and his upper body ensconced in the rosebush behind. And there were roses. Many, many roses. The last of the last. Blackened, bulbous, odorous roses embalmed by the winter wind. They drooped on their stems like hanged men, his subjects out of favour.

"This is a momentous occasion indeed. You, setting foot here." His toxic eyes curved. "Mother dearest."

Wilhelmina, too, collapsed. Her head drooped inside the cloak in an uncanny resemblance to the cadaverous roses. "You wretch! You heinous wretch!"

He sniffed. "Nothing I haven't heard before."

"Demon! Son of the Devil! _Dracula!"_ she screeched. "What do you want? You made perdition out of my life, seventeen years of it! Was that not enough?"

"What a thing to say, mother dearest. Anyone listening in would think I had actively set out to torment you. But I have been a very filial son, haven't I?" He regarded her obliquely. "I let you filch from me all these years. I let you send spy after assassin after priest and never said a word. Actually, now is the opportunity to thank you for that." He simpered. "My roses wouldn't have flourished so if it hadn't been for your choice of compost."

"Depraved beast!"

"Last but not least, I let you live." His voice deadened and Wilhelmina's soul shuddered. "I was very, very generous. But you were very, very greedy, and _avarice_ , dear stepmother, is the third of the deadly sins. You made your own hell. You dug your own grave. And it has been waiting for you, right here in this garden."

Ironically, it was Integral Hellsing's voice that echoed in Wilhelmina's ears as her stepson slowly got to his feet.

_"Alucard will return."_

"DRACULA!"

_"And when he does, there will be a place for you in his garden."_

Wilhelmina hurled her rings at him. "GET AWAY!"

"Pity, you should have grabbed the silver."

And suddenly he was before her, a sum of snow white, blood red and ebony black.

"So nice of you to leave your fingers bare. I did promise my Integra I would start with them."

Wilhelmina sobbed.

"But..." He sighed. "I'm so hungry. Maybe she won't be too cross with me if I killed you first and then chopped off your fingers. Mother, mother, won't you nourish me?"

His teeth were sharp.

"Like you did that winter day?"

Very sharp.

_Don't blink! They will swallow you whole. Ah, too late!_

xx

xx

There were two screams.

To everyone else there was but one scream, but to Integra, who was out on the grounds, there were two. She covered her ears on instinct, yet she knew it was not coming from outside. It was from inside. From inside her. From his blood.

_Alucard!_

Instinct led her to the direction of the rose garden. She had the way memorized by heart. If she could just—

There was a great rustling noise, and a whirlwind of loose leaves impeded her. Integra raised her sabre. A man emerged, green eyes blazing and teeth pressed tight. He lunged for her with a bayonet in his hand.

 _"Babylon!"_ he bellowed.

Integra blocked him. "The thirteenth."

xx

xx

xx

xx

* * *

À tes souhaits - To your wishes

Monstre de monstres - Monster of monsters

La petite mort - The little death

Die liebe Königin - The dear Queen

"Erlkönig" by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

 _Alice in Wonderland_ reference!

I just about _died_ writing this chapter. Penultimate chapters are the _worst_. It's why it took so long. I sincerely hope I did this justice.

I think I found a new perfect song to Alucard x Integra. It's "Thunder (Feat. Emeli Sande)" by Netsky. _So good_. I certainly will be listening to that a lot in future updates!

I love astronomy. I love stars. But being a city girl I'm lucky if I get to see more than a couple a night. Best thing I can do instead, is try to find stars on the surface. You know, like a new story, a favorite cafe, or you. My readers. You guys are my stars.

Also, if you are interested, I have a Tumblr blog, where I sometimes post about my writing and _Hellsing_ in general. The address is in my bio.


	20. XIX

_I will vanish in the morning light; I was only an invention of darkness._

xx

**XIX**

Finale

xx

 _How unpalatable_.

It was not as if he was surprised, considering the source. He was drinking only because he was hungry. So very hungry, like he had been that day, that winter day...as that cold, malnourished child who had had nothing. Nothing warm, nothing filling, nothing other than desperate need...

_Then there had come a steaming pot of tea..._

He crushed the Queen's windpipe to cease her screaming, and what remained was a garbled silence long overdue. Or was it silence? Something sounded in his ears so dreadfully _loud_. And how strange, there was no sensation of victory, even on this lovely night of Judgment. He felt, instead, fragmentation. Again, like he had that day, that winter day...

He threw the exsanguinated body of the woman into a rosebush, where it got tangled in its thorns. "That was abhorrent," he rasped. "I'm almost glad I didn't start with your fingers. You're worse than trash. Not one bit of you is worth reconsideration. My Integra deserves better." He smiled a red, red smile. "I'll let vermin nibble on your flesh, I'll let you decompose, and you'll be a dear and feed my roses so I can weave her a new crown, won't you? Mother deare—"

He broke off.

No sound passed his lips, but his blood, his _soul_ —ah, so that was what the loud noise was—was _screaming_.

He was fragmenting. His very being was _fissuring_ at the veins, and he understood. He had drained this worthless woman of her worthless blood, and in doing so, he had severed himself from this plane of existence. Irrevocably. His tenuous tie to life had snapped _at last_. And this, this was the whiplash. He could neither succumb to death nor take back his breath; he had no ground whereon to plant his feet.

This was terribly inconvenient. He certainly had not reckoned his severance would go about quite in this fashion. _Well, well, you_ were _a witch after all, Wilhelmina. Plaguing me to the bitter end. Loathsome hag_. He grimaced, his form losing consistency and deteriorating into an ectoplasmic mass of red and black. _Integra will have my head for this_ , he thought.

Then...nothing.

There was...

There had...

Once upon a time, there had come to a little prince a steaming pot of tea, a tea that smelled like death. The prince had drunk it anyway. _If I die from this, it won't be any worse than starving to death_ , was his reasoning.

He was only seven.

 _Maybe_ , the little prince had thought, _the tea would give me an instant of warmth_. Any form of it. Even if it was a step toward death. Yet the tea had not given the prince warmth. On the contrary, it had thrust him into a world of coldness colder than his skin, and darkness darker than his hair. He remembered...he remembered now he had wandered in that darkness, searching and searching for...what was it that he was looking for?

And then...

And then he had discovered something warm and bright and beautiful that, unlike the sun, did not hurt him no matter how long he stared.

The little prince returned to his body. Killed the maid, nearly tasted the blood. What power was it, though, that possessed him to stop? Was it that sweet far thing? It became an elusive memory, yet it brought desire to fester in him, for a pair of hands that would hold his flowers unflinching. He would kill and kill, add more and more corpses to his growing and growing garden, and he knew himself to be tainted beyond measure. Still a little piece of him waited and waited for the day someone would open his box, release the monsters and find him, a little piece of hope, curled up in a corner.

 _Have you been waiting for me?_ she would ask.

 _Yes_ , he would reply. _But you're here now._

 _My integral, my integrity_.

And if only they could live happily ever after.

Under the moon on this night of retribution all that was left standing in the rose garden was a mass of shadows, burning as ember and exerting raw, cataclysmic power. It was the Vampire, the first to surface after centuries. Come to undo this sublunary realm, he smiles with his stained lips, runs his salacious tongue over his tapering teeth, beckons you closer with his sanguine gaze.

In his chest, his heart lies forever still.

The shadows lost the shape of man and collapsed in the snow, where they spread out and slithered. Above the rosebushes shook, peppering loose petals on the sinuous trail, and below the bones of the Vampire's bygone victims shivered. In his sphere of influence the garden glowed red and its bushes now did more than shake—they _grew_. Their thorny branches overlapped one another, lengthened and thickened into stakes, grew and grew until the white of the snow was conquered entirely. One branch impaled the dead Queen through the neck and hoisted her up as if she was their macabre banner.

Roses bloomed. But they were not real. They were made of blood and they dripped crimson.

The scream had dissipated. In its place, if one listened very carefully, was a child's sob.

xx

xx

"Well met," Integra remarked, as their blades clashed.

Her feet dragged in the snow as her opponent pushed forth with brute strength. But she managed to withstand and, gaining momentum, she shoved him back. Her sabre struck air, the priest having jumped away with a terrible scowl on his scarred visage and a knowing glint in his virulent green eyes.

"You've had it, eh? His blood."

She said nothing, expressionless.

" _Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great! She has become a dwelling place for demons, a haunt for every unclean spirit, a haunt for every unclean bird, a haunt for every unclean and detestable beast_." The priest intoned. He then gnashed his teeth. "Yet here she stands before me, the idol, the inferior Madonna, the pale imitation that fiend clung to whilst swimming in his sea of blood!"

"What gross exaggerations," Integra said, her fingers tightening around the hilt at his mention of Alucard. "I am simply a knight."

"Simply a knight, she says!"

"You, however, are not simply a priest." She regarded him icily. "Fiend? The only fiend I see here is a man who would maim another's eyes and leave him to bleed to death in the middle of a forest. I won't forgive you for that." Her glasses flashed. "I won't."

"My deeds are His to judge and His to forgive," the priest growled. "I will not hear talk of forgiveness from a woman who has partaken in the most cursed of all existences. Do you realize what you have done? What _he_ has done?"

How could she not?

From that tiny amount of blood Alucard had given her, she could still hear—

"I am not here for a confessional," Integra bit out, the urge to find Alucard in the garden grating on her nerves worse than her earlier restlessness. "If you're looking for a fight, have at it." She held her sabre at the ready.

Alexander Anderson's scowl seemed to be permanently etched on his face, but he did not raise his bayonet. Yet. "What do you expect to find in that _rosetum?_ Aye, I've been there," he supplemented when her mouth thinned. "That catacomb in the guise of a garden. Led there by the weeping, I was. Souls are shackled to that place, my brethren among them." His lips upturned jeeringly. "Your precious wretch's doing."

Integra remembered the first time she had been there. She remembered feeling a deep sense of tragedy in its earth, and she had wondered, _What could possibly be sad about a little rose garden?_

Everything.

Once upon a time, she had been crowned with those roses, those too-red blossoms that grew nowhere else. She understood now that it had been Alucard presenting her with the blood of his enemies. She would have killed them herself, she had told him. She would have shed their blood for hurting him. And the crown had been his response. For what could be a more perfect birthday gift than the very blood she had sought?

Integra's shoulders drooped. She laughed, and if it was a sad little laugh, the priest did not comment.

Those roses had been so _lush_. So _vibrant_. The soil would have to have been overflowing with nutrients to cultivate such thriving flowers. For years, and years and years and years.

"And did you pray for the repose of their souls?" she asked softly. "Of your brethren who tried to murder a child?"

The scowl returned.

"Let your poor souls stay there and weep until the end of time." Her voice was deathly cold. "They deserve it."

"Vicious wench," Anderson condemned. "Your infatuation with the demon is crippling you. There has been an upheaval in the realm. Did you not feel it?"

_The scream._

"The Vampire has surfaced. Your monster, the wretch you defend, he's gone and drank his fill and severed himself from this mortal plane for good. That which you seek in the rosetum is but a shade, forever exiled from both heaven and hell. He will leave a path of carnage upon which not even you, his idol, will be spared."

_Wrong._

"Monsters have no loyalty, no worship, no love. They do not recognize the hand that feeds them. Whatever emotion yours held for you will be the dream of a dashed humanity."

_Wrong again._

Integra merely smiled. "Wrong on both counts, Father."

"Then you are lost in denial."

"I'm stating a fact," Integra said. "My Alucard will never hurt me. He will always recognize me. I know this, because I love him, as he loves me."

_On her head is a crown of roses._

Her eyes closed. "Besides."

_The scream has dissipated._

"I can hear it."

_In its place, if one listens very carefully, is a child's sob._

"Can't you?"

When she opened her eyes, Alexander Anderson was looking exceedingly unhappy.

"I hear it," he said.

"Then let me through."

Anderson heard it, the child's sob. Children were his greatest weakness. On rainy days, the children of his orphanage would run about in the mud, get dirt all over their faces. He would scold them, they would giggle, and he would laugh. Their faces were dirty but their hearts were pure.

There would always be hope for children. They would always be given a chance.

The priest pushed his glasses up. "The weeping in the garden was not solely my brethren's."

Integra understood.

"Fools, the lot of them." His green eyes simmered. "The murdering of children is unforgivable. However." His forehead creased. "The monster is no longer a child. What I hear is false, for I met in the woods a grown man, a ghastly monstrosity. And I, Alexander Anderson, will not let such a creature roam this earth!" Out of thin air the priest conjured a second bayonet, and the blessed silver blades crashed into each other.

The knight readied her sword, her jaw set angrily. So, they would have to fight. "Then why didn't you finish him when you had the chance, Father Alexander Anderson? Is this a game to you? Did you enjoy drawing out his pain?"

"Hope leads a blind man. In that bottomless pit I saw it. An anomalous hope, born from his anomalous worship of the Jezebel whom he calls his idol—you, Sir Integral Fairbrook Wingates Hellsing! I wished to see if it was not a trick, if it indeed would lead him out of the woods, and indeed it has." The bayonets were raised. "Yet this has gone too far. The Vampire cannot be left standing. His reign of terror will lay waste beyond the borders of this land!"

"I will not let you hurt him again," Integra snarled, and struck.

Anderson caught her blade between his bayonets as its tip charged at his jugular. Integra twisted free and slashed at his midriff. She was going all out. She was not stupid; she knew she had a needle's chance of winning. But she would fight the whole bloody way to the garden if it meant she could—

Metal clashed against metal and sparks flew. Integra had to grip her sabre with both hands. This priest was a horror. A Regenerator _and_ freakishly strong? No wonder Alucard had ended up as he had. Was he even human?

"Look at you," he taunted as their weapons rattled between them. "With blood on your face, your neck, your clothes, you make as ghastly an image as your bloodsucker. Tell me, Sir Integral Hellsing, how long do you think you can keep him in your thrall? A decade? Half a century? Or maybe, you'll follow in his footsteps and damn yourself for eternity!"

The blood on Integra's face had dried and crusted, yet the cut under her left eye made by the mirror shard was still slightly open. A bead of sweat rolled down and irritated the cut, causing her to blink out of reflex. The action pushed out a fresh drop of blood. It landed in the snow, eerily similar to a tear.

_Just as you will fall after me, I will fall after you._

"I don't do things by halves," she replied with a wry smile.

_Straight into hell._

Anderson cackled. With tremendous force he knocked the sabre out of her hands, sending it spiraling past the moon and into a shrub several meters away.

"Tonight, then, Babylon will fall."

Integra clenched her bare hands into fists. _Damn it!_

What now?

The thirteenth slowly advanced, his grin wide and manic, his blessed silver bayonets mercurial in the moonlight...

_Then—_

The ground rumbled.

_What?_

The knight and the priest looked down simultaneously at the first tremor. _An earthquake? Surely not_.

At the second, more violent tremor, innumerable cracks appeared akin to cobwebs on the snowy terrain. Integra gasped.

Was that—

The cracks were harbingers. They signaled the encroachment of a sea of branches that tangled and trampled with a mind of its own. Integra was transfixed by one particular detail.

Were those—

Roses?

There were roses. There were many, many, many roses. They grew in outrageous numbers on thickets that had gorged themselves on the carnivorous powers of blood and darkness, hanging on black boughs wet and glistening, verisimilarly organs. They had once been real flowers, live flowers, if lurid and wanton, if tragic. But they were now fake. These imitation blossoms bloomed in unison, in the same manner as a hundred pairs of red, red orbs would snap open at the scent of virgin essence. And these blossoms, they were guarded by a network of thorns that had already gleefully seized their victims. On the tallest stake was impaled the wan corpse of a former witch-queen, while on a modest stalk dangled an oafish noble sans an arm, and around there were various others, men and beasts alike.

They aimed for the priest. The thorny branches with their fake blossoms circled him like the coils of a boa. Anderson's bayonets worked quickly, catabolizing the tendrils with the sound of burning wood. Yet he was outnumbered. When they threatened to constrict him he unleashed a storm of Bible leaves which formed a sacrosanct sphere. The roses bled away to nothing upon touching the barrier. Red colored what little ground remained white.

And through all this, Integra stood.

The roses did not harm her. They gave a wide berth for her, their queen, their true queen. They bloomed larger and brighter for her, and though this made them appear only all the more abominable, the knight did not flinch. She cupped a blossom in her hands. It mattered not if its petals spilled out between her fingers like the sinews of a dead heart or the seeds of a burst pomegranate. She knew this rose. She loved this rose.

"Where is he?" she asked, breathless.

The thickets moved, parting a path toward the castle. That was enough. The rose in her palms wept crimson before melting. They all did. In her wake they burgeoned into their best, regardless of their artificiality, and died, staining her coat, her skin and her hair. But gently, because they loved her. Their deaths gave them meaning. They had only ever bloomed for her. They had only ever been as real as she wanted them to be.

 _We only wanted seconds, Sir Integral,_ a rose said.

 _Seconds,_ they chorused pitiably. _We were so hungry._

"I know," she sighed.

She retrieved her sabre and went.

The priest watched her go.

He could still hear the child's sob.

xx

xx

Seras was waiting for her at the entrance hall. "Sir Integral, thank God! I was so worri—" She gaped. "Wha-what happened?"

"Nothing."

_"Nothing?"_

Integra came in, carrying her blood-soaked coat on one arm and looking, for all intents and purposes, as if she had just slaughtered hundreds of men. Perhaps in a way she had, but she was in no mood to concern herself with semantics. She stuck her coat out to Seras as she walked past her. "Won't you hold this for me?"

Seras took it. "Sir—"

"What are you doing down here alone?" Integra asked. "Where's your husband? Walter?"

"Pip is in the dungeons freeing the prisoners, and we've moved Mr. Dornez to this floor."

"Resourceful of you. Well done."

Seras jogged to catch up to the knight's long strides. "Thank you, but Sir, are you alright? You worried us when you rushed off like that. Is everything okay outside?"

"Yes," Integra said automatically. "Everything is fine. In fact, soon we'll be able to go home."

"We will?" Seras said excitedly, then sobered. "Oh." She wondered if this was the right moment to mention that she and Pip had nowhere to go.

Integra stopped in her tracks at last and turned to her. "Of course, you and your husband are welcome to stay at Hellsing Manor." She graced her with a small but genuine smile. "Should you so choose, you may call me Integra."

Seras blinked. "I...don't know what to say." She was overwhelmed. "Thank you, Sir...Integra."

Integra returned her gaze forward and started walking again. Her eyes bore into the interior of the castle. "I only have to find Alucard, and then we can leave."

"His Highness?" Seras asked. "But I thought he was outside?"

"No. He's in here."

She said it so sadly that Seras could not speak.

The younger woman stayed back and watched the knight climb the stairs.

"Integra!"

The knight halted.

"I think—no, I _believe_ —that no matter what, you and the prince will live happily ever after," Seras professed. "Because a knight and a prince deserve a happy ending!"

Integra let out a laugh, a genuine laugh, and it echoing behind her, she went on her way.

The knight journeyed through the castle. Each step took her further and further from the decorations which had collapsed under the weight of their own extravagance, to a part of the castle grey and bare and drafty. A place where, much like the rose garden, none ventured unless they were stupid, lost, or suicidal. She had been lost here, once. She remembered the young girl who had clutched at her cloak, the cashmere one, as her feet had pitter-pattered on the dusty marble floor.

The girl who had wandered lost was now a woman who strode with purpose in her bloodstained blouse and her heavy boots, and she approached a door of mahogany. She opened it.

Darkness greeted her. She thought it familiar. The shadows stretched and snaked themselves around her waist, her wrists. _She's here she's here she's here!_ they susurrated. She shrugged them off but let them leave caresses on her as she pierced through the miasma. _She's here she's here she's here!_ Her hair, soft lightning, caressed them back. Her eyes, blue diamonds, saw faint light up ahead, and in it stood a slight figure.

He was praying. He held his hands upturned with his fingers closed, his lips moving soundlessly, forming words solely the wind brushing past him could hear. She had never seen him pray before. She had never seen him at this age.

"Alucard," Integra whispered.

Red, red eyes looked up at her from a child's face. When he ran to her and she could gaze into them without stooping down, she realized the sorcery of the room had reverted her to a child as well, in a little blue dress she used to wear. How curious. But she would not ponder on that now, not when his arms, too pale and too thin, wrapped around her and hugged her tight. He was smaller than her. His cheek came to rest on her shoulder.

"You're here," he said.

She clasped her hands behind him. "Have you been waiting for me?"

He drew back and stared at her hungrily. "Yes. But you're here now."

"Silly prince," she chided, as she swept aside locks of his sable hair. "You were supposed to come back to me."

"I tried. But I couldn't." He sighed. "Isn't it curious how it all ends at the start?"

Integra cast her eyes around. She did not recognize this room. The room with the mahogany door had for her always been a library filled with fond memories of their first meeting and subsequent afternoons spent conversing over tea and biscuits. Yet Alucard's powers had warped a wall of bookcases into a balcony exposing a snowy sky. She could have marveled at the realness of the illusion, had her instincts not alerted her to an ominous brand of quietude.

She took his hand. "Let us leave this place, Alucard."

"I can't. Not yet."

 _"Why?"_ she demanded.

"I told you," he said with a dry sort of amusement that jarred with his child's face. " _It all ends at the start_. There is no progress for a monster, an _undead_ monster. He is doomed to repeat the same stretch of time ad nauseam until his past is destroyed by his future." His voice was young but his words were old, nigh ancient.

It was then she heard, to her surprise, footsteps, and suddenly the image of Queen Wilhelmina burst in from the darkness. But it was simply that, an image, or perhaps a shadow, blurred at the edges and tinted scarlet. It was followed by the likewise image of an unfamiliar maid carrying a tea tray with pot and cup. They busied themselves with setting the table, and Integra knew without needing to be told that they were to reenact a scene in Alucard's past.

 _The start_.

He whispered in her ear. "Just watch."

So she did. She watched the players assume their roles. She watched the maid pour a cup of tea that smelled like death. She watched the prince drink it to the last drop. She watched him fall. She watched the woman who should have been staked fifteen years earlier rejoice. She watched him rise. She watched him kill the maid. She watched him laugh a laugh that sounded like a child's sob, and with shaking hands and brimming eyes she thought she had never resented him more.

Integra was in front of his kneeling form, squeezing his cheeks and shaking him. "I could hate you right now," she hissed.

"Don't," he begged.

"How dare you. How dare you do this." She pressed her forehead to his. They were the image of innocent childhood sweethearts, an image she shattered with her words. "Your enemies lay dead, your castle in ruins, your night of reckoning was glorious. Nothing binds you to this place anymore, Alucard! You can leave with me."

The little prince parted from her and pivoted, stretching his arms out to the sides. "I wanted you to see me as I once had been, and is still. For, as you have said, nothing is bound to me now, not the vengeance that has fueled me nor the anticipation of a crown. I am back to null; I am a hungry child who has nothing. Nothing."

"Except," she said, "me."

His eyes were very wide and very red.

A snowflake wafted into the room. It danced in the air between them, a perfect six-pointed crystal, twirling into the palm he had raised unconsciously. It lay there, almost indistinguishable from his skin. He stared at it.

He stood with his back to the wall of darkness which separated them from the door, so that when the Queen reentered, the illusion playing whether or not its audience watched, it was Integra who greeted her blurred, hateful countenance. The knight still had her sabre strapped to her hip. It looked verily cumbersome on her petite frame against her blue dress, but none of that affected the litheness of her movements as she stepped forward and unsheathed the sword and plunged it into the woman's heart.

The illusion opened her mouth and screamed voicelessly before evaporating.

The shadows fluctuated. Their hold over the room was dispelled at the gleam of her sabre, for the weapon was, as were all Hellsing weaponry, forged of silver.

When Integra turned, her platinum locks were as long as she had been once tall, and her eyes behind her glasses were sharper than the tip of an iceberg. They saw that the balcony had disappeared, replaced with cases of worn books, and moonlight was streaming through a window.

Alucard was sprawled in an armchair, his legs thrust out before him, his head tilted languorously to the side and his hair a coiffeur's nightmare hanging across his face. His shirt was so thoroughly soaked in red that it was impossible to imagine it had ever been white. She was no better off, of course. And like him she was so very tired. Integra let her sabre slip from her fingers as she trudged over to him and plopped into his lap.

Her head hit his chest. "I've always wanted to do that."

At that he burst into loud, raucous laughter quite different from his last, allowing relief to diffuse throughout Integra's being.

His arms coiled greedily around her waist. "Integra," Alucard said finally. "Do you know what they say about wishes? You should always be careful how you go about making one. Wishing on a falling star, for instance, is a most foolish thing to do. Why would you cast your desires on a star that has fallen from heaven? Where would it land if not at the feet of the Serpent who lazes underground? Same goes for wishes pressed into the snow. The snow melts, seeps into the earth and rains down on the Devil's horns."

"After gardening you should take up poetry," Integra responded with a smirk.

"But regardless," Alucard continued, smiling into her hair, which was saturated in the scent of blood that to him was uncannily reminiscent of roses, "I made a wish, on a snowflake, no less. And though it took years and years and years—and I could have waited _thousands_ —it came true." He nuzzled the slope of her neck.

_Integra, Integra, I remember now. It was you I saw that day._

His fangs grazed her skin. "My Integra," he murmured.

Reverently.

_And how I have wished for you ever since._

She swatted him. "You've had enough for tonight."

He moaned but complied, instead capturing the hand that had chastised him and kissing it.

Integra listened quietly to his heart and found it cold and silent. There was a pang in her own, which she banished quickly because, really, nothing had changed. He was still her beautiful, monstrous prince. He could be ruthless and childish and insufferable and incorrigible, but he was hers. Her rose.

"You have blood on your face. May I?" He was stroking her left cheek.

She swatted him for that, too. "It hasn't escaped my notice, you know, that you failed to keep your word," she pointed out. "Where are the fingers you promised me?"

"Oh, _no_ ," Alucard purred, relentless, his icy ones sliding into her blouse. " _However_ shall I make up for it?"

Integra got up. "You can start by cleaning up the mess outside."

"Ah, but my Integra, that's no fun at all."

"Later," she told him at the door. "When we're home."

xx

xx

xx

xx

_And I leave you as a souvenir the dark, fanged rose I plucked from between my thighs,_

_like a flower laid on a grave. On a grave._

\- Angela Carter, "The Lady of the House of Love"

* * *

Thank you. I could not have done this without you.

Next up is the Epilogue.


	21. Epilogue

xx

**Epilogue**

xx

The death of flowers is a messy affair, with colors, scents, and shapes that have lost all meaning, mere confetti on the ground after a night of revelry to be trampled and reduced to dust. Yet there was none of that in the aftermath of the night many men and many beasts had met their fates dancing the macabre orchestrated by the monster king.

He was loyal only to his queen, and when she told him to clean up he did. He cleaned up the thorns, the blood, the corpses. They vanished without a trace. The snow was once again a deceptive tabula rasa, the roseal blood that had inked it fused to his subsistence. He was sated, for now. The itch would never be truly assuaged but for now he was full. As a parting gift he asked to leave a body staked in the front gardens. She said no. "They won't appreciate it like I do."

He could not argue with that.

The body of the witch was therefore thrown into, not an oven, but the belly of a hellhound, and it was deemed close enough.

And so the king and queen's reign started and ended in one night.

They went home.

Two days later, Dillon, the hapless valet, found himself heading toward the gates of Hellsing Manor. This time, however, he was approaching it from within. He was not really a valet anymore. In fact, he was part of Sir Hellsing's retinue. Duties included fetching the mail, dusting the shelves, and brewing the tea in lieu of Mr. Dornez, who was still under the influence of the drug but would wake sometime this afternoon, according to the doctor. Though Dillon was a tad slow due to his leg, his masters did not mind. Sir Hellsing was busy dealing with the political fallout and His Highness was, well, _dead_ (he was struggling to get used to the idea) and no longer required his usual services.

He was proud of his job. What did it matter that the prince was dead, that he kept a terrifying six-eyed dog as a pet, or that Sir Hellsing was one leaf away from setting fire to her desk? They were _happy_. The prince and the knight. At least, when the knight was not at her desk. Yesterday Dillon had witnessed them out on the grounds, the prince having convinced her to take a breather. They had walked, very slowly, under an umbrella.

"They're so lovely together," Ms. Victoria had gushed.

Ms. Victoria and Mr. Bernadotte were settling in. Ms. Victoria was fascinated with the manor, had declared the place "stern but sincerer than the castle" which had earned her a crooked smile from Sir Hellsing, and Mr. Bernadotte was quickly making friends at the barracks. They were inherently sunny people. They made the manor seem almost cheerful.

Dillon reached the gates and greeted the keepers. "Good morning."

"Good morning," the men replied in unison. They had also been recruited by Sir Hellsing. Their names were Robert and Neil, but she called them Tweedle-dum and Tweedle-dee. Interchangeably. No one knew why.

"There's a letter from court," Robert said, handing Dillon an envelope with the royal seal. "It looks very important."

"It must be the invitation for the coronation ball," Dillon said.

It was the fruit of Sir Hellsing and the Round Table's grueling efforts during the last forty-eight hours, and it had been feasible at such a short notice only because, as it turned out, Sir Islands had covertly prepared a fail-safe should the prince's ascension prove disastrous. This revelation had resulted in a shouting match between the two knights, with Sir Hellsing accusing the Convention of never having considered the prince in the first place and Sir Islands faulting her naiveté. After that had blown over, circumstances being circumstances, Sir Hellsing had grudgingly helped finalize the enthronement of a cousin of the late king.

Dillon read the addressee. His face fell. "It doesn't mention the prince."

Robert and Neil exchanged glances. "Well," Neil began, scratching his beard, "I suppose it would be kind of weird, if a dead man was invited."

"She won't like this," Dillon pointed out.

The three winced.

"And today was supposed to be peaceful, too," Robert said sullenly.

xx

xx

Finally, peace.

He was chaos by nature, yet he could appreciate peace, especially if it was delivered in this form. And if it was he did not sleep. He could not sleep. Not when he was like this, tangled in sheets, pressed to an expanse of beautiful dark skin so warm it prickled his fingers.

How their contrasts had fascinated him from the very beginning! He had stared and stared at this girl who had been unlike any other, and he had known, implicitly, that she would be his everything.

He had felt every part of her that was different from him—kissed every softness, caressed every hardness, tasted every sweetness and bitterness—these past couple of nights, fulfilling the less innocent fancies that had tortured him whenever he watched her sleep. Just to be worshipping the minutiae of her being with the tenderest busses was ecstasy enough, but he was more monster than man, and sometimes he could not be sated with such gentle nothings. Sometimes he wanted to devour her whole.

So he devoured her. Her essence. Her sighs and moans and screams. And she, never to be outdone, rendered him a slave of her touch—as if he was not already—and together they made a mockery of heaven as surely as they had made a mockery of hell, for they had recreated it here on earth in her bed.

 _Mine, mine, mine_ , the shadows cooed. _Integra, Integra, Integra_.

He had her all to himself this morning. The political shite was settled. They could sleep in, and what a delightful range of options that provided. He smiled lazily, perfectly content at the present to let his fingers serenade her to an unknowable tune on her stomach. His hair, however, was not so well-behaved, crimping on her flesh in jealous swirls that betrayed the glutton inside that ever craved her. He let his fingers glide a bit lower.

She caught his hand as it attempted to sneak past her navel.

"Alucard," she said, drowsily, warningly.

" _None shall sleep! None shall sleep!"_ Alucard enunciated, his sibilant voice traveling down her spine and making her shiver against his bare chest. " _Not even you_ , _oh Princess_ , _in your cold bedroom_ , _watching the stars that tremble with love and with hope!"_

"My room is not cold," Integra mumbled, eyes half-lidded in the dim early morning light. "And I'm not a princess." The left side of her face, which sported a little scar under the eye, was pillowed on his arm. Alucard had insisted on giving her another sample of his blood to heal the scar but she had refused. She did not want to exploit his vampiric powers any more than she already had, and besides, it would fade away in time and made her look, to quote Seras, "rather dashing."

The hand she held captive wriggled free, only for its fingers to slip between hers and clamp down. "No," he agreed. His mouth was very close to her ear. "You are my knight, my eternal queen, and I can't fathom any place that could possibly be warmer than here, where your heart," he tugged their hands up to where said organ beat for the two of them, "is its furnace."

"Someday I'll have to rinse your mouth of saccharine nonsense," she muttered.

"You adore my saccharine nonsense, my Integra," Alucard purred. "I'm the only one with the audacity to say them to your face, and mean them completely."

"And how audacious of you to say so." She turned in his arms with a smirk, taking their joined hands with her and trapping them between their flushed bodies. She could both see and feel his desire, the way his irises darkened into discs of barely contained lust when they beheld her in all her mussed glory. She imagined she was looking at him the same.

"You bring out the worst in me." He meant to say it teasingly, but it came out as a harsh whisper.

His hair was a riot. The inky black curls elongated and crawled over her shoulder, her back, her waist, determined to spool her in. She stretched her neck, her lips brushing the outline of his jaw.

"Then perhaps I should take responsibility and cleanse you right this moment?"

"Please," he groaned, inclining his head so she could meet his lips chastely, then ardently, filling his senses with her heat, her breath, her palpitation. They had had countless kisses since that starry midnight when he had crept into this very room uninvited, when she had challenged the gods of the underworld for their thrones. Yet his blood would surge as if each kiss were his first. He drowned in waves upon waves of her mellow tresses.

He rolled her onto her back, and removing his lips, he gazed down at her. "You've been so tense these days, and as much as I enjoyed coaxing your nerves one by one until you were a beautiful, moaning mess beneath me—"

She swatted at him. He chuckled.

"—I was very tempted to put those old busybodies out of their misery. Wouldn't that have been easier, my Integra?"

"Now that would have gone well."

"You need only ask, and I will do it," Alucard said.

Integra lifted her chin.

She need not even ask. He gave her that kiss.

"Not until after I set fire to my desk."

Much later, when the sun was up, they took a bath together and much, much later they emerged, arm in arm, human and monster making their mundane way to breakfast. The insane grin of satisfaction Alucard wore sent the few servants Hellsing employed fleeing from their path, to twitter amongst themselves, most likely. Integra let it slide. They knew better than to question her and the presence of a prince who had been officially proclaimed dead two days ago.

They passed the main corridor of the second floor. A portrait caught Alucard's eye, and like before, he stopped. "I remember this picture. It's your ancestor. The one with the bad hair."

Integra looked back and forth from him to the portrait. "Hark who's talking."

"I'll have you know that my hair is a deeply personal statement." On cue, it coiled in the air, seeking her out. She flapped it away.

"If you're going to stand here and criticize the coiffure of a long dead man _again_ , I'll eat breakfast alone," she deadpanned. "We've already wasted nearly the entire morning."

"And you loved every second of it," he said lasciviously. But he did resume walking.

There had been something about the portrait of Abraham Van Helsing that had piqued him as a child, and now he could pinpoint the source of that pique. "It was your ancestor who vanquished the last vampire."

Integra hummed. She had told him the tale herself.

"Isn't it uncanny?" Alucard mused. There was no doubt or perturbation in his words, merely curiosity. "You, his descendant, and I, the first. What an amusing hand fate has dealt us."

"Are you waxing philosophical now?" she quipped. "You're being quite introspective today."

"I had the strangest dream, my Integra, the night we danced here." They had come out to the main staircase, where Integra peered down at the patch of polished marble he was referring to. It was scintillating in the light from the tall windows. She felt a restlessness beneath his clothed arm and knew he was instinctively disagreeing with the weather.

"There was a faceless man, clad entirely in red, towering over the world. He would consume it." They went down the stairs. "He was unstoppable."

Between the blocks of sun cast on the floor they stood, their arms linked, until he turned to arrest her with eyes that were, for her and only for her, a delicate red, like the daintiest petals of his roses. Roses, she reminded herself, which were no more. The flowers had exhausted themselves in her wake, the thickets hacked into burnt pieces by Alexander Anderson. The priest had left a bayonet plunged into the earth where the garden had once been, and at its significance Alucard had laughed. "He'll come back," he said, crushing the silver underfoot.

"Yet there was another figure," he was murmuring with those delicate shades of red. "A smaller one. A woman. And this unstoppable creature, he knelt before her."

Integra narrowed her eyes. "Don't."

Alucard smiled. "Don't what?"

"You know precisely what, my overdramatic, showy prince."

"I like it when you put it in those terms," he preened. "But no, I'm not going to kneel, if that is what has you worried. I'm simply going to—"

And suddenly he had his arms around her waist and was lifting her off the floor, and Integra let out a tiny shriek. She clung to his neck before beating a fist on his shoulder. " _Alucard!"_

His chaotic laughter reverberated across her rib cage.

"Put me down!"

"Never," he said. "Never, never, never."

"Insufferable git!"

"I'm _your_ insufferable git," he countered.

Integra huffed. She could not argue with that. She could, however, prove him right. She pressed herself closer and deliberately ran her fingers through his mane, massaging his scalp, and he responded immediately, his lashes fluttering at her touch. "Is that it, then?" she prompted. "Your dream?"

"The woman welcomed him. She called him, 'Count.'"

"Count," she echoed. "There's no such title in this realm."

"Maybe there was in the past, or will be in the future," Alucard said cryptically. He was fast losing interest in the topic and desired nothing more than to carry her back upstairs to her bedroom and stay there for millennia.

A corner of her lips curled. Ah, he wanted to kiss it. "Are you saying it was me and you in your dream?"

"That would make sense, wouldn't it?" he replied. "Here I am, wearing the mask of a sated man, but you know the blood running in my veins is no longer merely my own, and it hungers for the lives of each and every person in this household." His gaze flicked briefly to her jugular. "No amount of soap will erase the taint on my soul, as it has for your floor. I am a monster and I relish the world engulfed in fire and ashes. And always, always, I will possess the potential to be its instigator."

She thumbed his lips as he spoke. He opened his mouth, displaying his rows of sharp, sharp teeth. Boldly, she prodded a fang and he managed, just barely, not to bite.

"But always, always, you will answer to me," she said for him. "When I ask you to save the world, or ruin it, you'll do it. Because you're mine and you love me."

His stare was harrowing. "Yes."

"As surely as I am yours," Integra whispered, "and I love you."

He looked at her, his eyes mad with love and lust and worship, and with an astonishing lack of prudence she thought she honestly would not mind if he carried her back upstairs to her bedroom and stayed there for millennia.

"Oh!" a voice squeaked.

They swiveled their heads around to see Seras and Pip peeping from behind a doorway.

Seras reddened. "I didn't—" She fumbled and accidentally elbowed her husband in the gut as she straightened ("Ouch!"). "We didn't mean—we were going to—"

" _Très nauséabonde_ ," Pip said loudly, and this time Seras elbowed him on purpose.

"Good morning," Alucard said, baring his teeth at them.

"Yeah, yeah," Pip rolled his eye. "You two weren't coming down for breakfast so we were going to get you. Not that we didn't know you were _faire la bête à deux dos_ —"

" _Pip!"_

"So, you eating or not?"

"I have my meal right here," Alucard remarked.

Integra almost kicked him. "Put me down," she ordered.

Alucard made toward the dining room instead.

"Alucard." Integra smacked his arms. " _Alucard!"_

"Merde." Pip shook his head and Seras attempted to muffle her giggles as they followed. "You guys are worse than us and we're _newlyweds_."

xx

xx

Dillon nervously handed her the invitation at the end of breakfast, after Alucard miraculously had the tact to dodge her glare behind his goblet of donor blood and announce he would be in the library, and as Seras and Pip were having a hushed conversation over a large bowl of blueberries and cream. He also set a cup of Darjeeling on the table, which Integra let grow cold.

She retreated to her office and tossed the letter onto her desk, the letter that did not have Alucard's name on it, not even "His Highness, the Prince." It was as if they could not wait to get rid of him, to erase his existence, and she hated it.

She lit a cigar.

The nameless prince was proclaimed dead. Those who knew he persisted as Alucard, the Vampire, were members of Hellsing and the Round Table. And though her people trusted her to keep him at bay, _those old busybodies_ were all but outright demanding more concrete measures. _Too dangerous_ , they said. _A risk to humanity,_ they said. _Can't be trusted_ , they said. So quick to judge, so quick to condemn—perhaps she could not blame them, yet that did not stop her from resenting them, in some ways more than the Queen or Sir Bradbury. But one shouting match a day was enough, and it was with a sore throat and a fixed smile that Integra had said, "Trust _me_."

She was rather fond of her desk.

Perfection was a myth. There could never be a perfectly happy ending. Integra was aware that the Round Table would continually question her and Alucard, their relationship, their motives, their actions. She and Alucard would probably never be pronounced wife and husband in front of a holy man. She would probably be condemned as the Babylonian whore who consorted with the Devil for the rest of her life. She would be lying if she said she cared.

She held up her cigar and the invitation a centimeter apart.

There was a knock on the door.

Integra sighed. "Enter."

Seras shuffled in, looking anxious.

"Seras? What brings you here?"

"Sir Integra, I—" She paused. "I'm sorry, am I interrupting?"

Integra lowered her hands. "Not at all. Have a seat."

Seras sat and took a deep breath. "I just wanted to thank you—"

"Again?"

"—again for letting us stay—" Seras blinked, then blushed. "Um..."

"Spit it out," Integra said, not unkindly. "Don't pretend you're here to thank me for the sixth time in two days."

"I'm here to tell you!" Seras blurted. "I talked with Pip and he told me I should, and I'm ready to tell you, Integra. My story. If...it's okay with you?"

Integra gently snuffed out her cigar.

"Of course."

It was a true story, and true stories are rarely happy.

Once upon a time, there was a little girl named after a Roman goddess, who lived with her parents in the outskirts of a town on the borders of a godforsaken kingdom. Her father was a constable, her mother had been a nurse and a governess, and together they taught her a bit of self-defense, a bit of medicine, a bit of French. They loved her and she loved them. They were happy. They could have led a picture-perfect life; ah, if only her father had not angered those highwaymen!

"They followed my father back home. They killed him, they killed my mother, they—" Seras froze. Her eyes were faraway. And Integra, who knew grief, extended a hand which she grasped unconsciously.

"My mother hid me in a cupboard. I couldn't—I didn't—"

"You were nine."

"I—" Seras shuddered. Then she seemed to rouse herself from the dregs of space and time, using Integra's hand as anchor. She blinked down at it as though she had just realized. "I thought I was holding Pip's hand. He held me like this, when I told him." She smiled. "You see? The middle might not be happy, even the beginning might not be happy, but the ending, the ending will always be."

"But you said you were indebted to my family, Seras. How did that happen?"

"It was Sir Hellsing. I know it was Sir Hellsing because I heard someone call him."

_Arthur Hellsing was out chasing beasts._

_One was drawn by the smell of blood emanating from the house at the edge of the woods._

_It led him there. He stopped._

_"Sir Hellsing!" his subordinate called. "Why are we stopping?"_

_"Look. The door's open."_

"When he saw what happened, he ordered the man with him to get help. He covered my parents with a sheet, and then ran outside, to look for the murderers. There were gunshots." Her smile took on a strange quality. "I was so grateful. They could have come back inside and discovered me. Your father saved me."

Integra was reeling. "I know that day. We were on our way back from our travels. We were staying at an inn. Father had gone out to get some air, but when he didn't return after an hour we started to worry because he'd been ill even then. Walter was furious. And when he did return, he mentioned coming across a murder scene, yet he never mentioned a girl! Seras, you—!"

Seras stared at their hands. "I think he might have known I was there. He kept calling out if anyone was there. But I couldn't. I couldn't go with him."

"Why?" Integra knocked her chair back and rounded the desk to shake the girl by the shoulders. "Seras, _why?"_

"Because." Her expression was haunted. "I wanted to find the rest of them and kill them."

A shout came from the upstairs library.

"Oh." Seras snapped out of her trance. "Oh no. I'm sorry, I don't know what's gotten into me!" She tried to bolt, but Integra was having none of that. She grabbed her and embraced her.

She held her tight. "How hard it must have been for you."

Tears welled in cornflower blue eyes.

"How curious, Seras," Integra murmured. "If things had turned out differently perhaps you and I could have been friends, even sisters."

Seras snuggled into her. Integra smelled like tea and tobacco. Also roses, faintly. Her warmth reminded her of her mother. "I don't regret the way things turned out. In the end I met Pip and I love him more than anyone and anything else in the world. And though it took a long time I finally met you."

"And?" Integra asked. "Did you have your revenge?"

Seras simply smiled.

There was another shout from the library.

"That sounds like Pip. What _is_ he doing?" Seras frowned.

Integra allowed her to sidestep the question. It was a story for another time, and they had all the time in the world. "Let's go see what mischief our men have gotten themselves into while they missed us."

Seras giggled.

Together they went upstairs as kindred spirits, closer and truer than before. An amusing hand of fate, indeed. Integra listened to Seras humming happily beside her. Had she managed to tilt the world on its axis? They flocked to her, these people, these men and this woman who all had bruises and scars of their own. They were hers. She would defend them with her life, however lengthy a life hers may be. If it would even remain a life.

But that, too, was for another time.

Upon reaching the library they were greeted with an odd sight. Books were scattered haphazardly, cushions were displaced, and Pip was crouched behind an armchair, shielding his head with a tome. He groaned in a mix of embarrassment and relief when he saw them. "Ah, fuck."

Integra belatedly thought she should have brought her cigar. "What is going on here?"

"Your insane _amoureux_ , is what. He bloody has it in for me!" At an indiscernible noise that sounded from somewhere in the manor the ex-mercenary jumped. "For fuck's sake! If this is payback for that punch I gave you, I'm not regretting a thing. You deserved it, connard!"

She was about to ask _where_ Alucard was when his voice echoed from the walls.

 _"How petty do you think I am, Bernadotte? I'm doing this simply because it's_ entertaining."

"Fuck you and your definition of _entertaining_. Alright, I've had enough." Pip leapt up and chucked the tome away. "Come out and face me like a man!"

_"You forget, I'm not a man."_

Silence. Then—

Bats.

Bats. A cloud of bats. A colony of bats. _In the library_.

Pip and Seras both shrieked and ducked, Pip behind the armchair and Seras behind Integra, who stood stock-still, arms crossed, as the shadowy bats screeched and circumvented her.

"Bats," she said. "Figures."

One hovered about her ear. _"I had to entertain myself somehow while you kept me waiting."_

Integra glanced at the bat—which to her looked more like a pipistrelle than a vampire, not that she had any intention of saying so, knowing he would be an absolute child about it—and turned her back to the ominous swarm of flying mammals scuttering to and fro amidst her ancestral legacy. She needed a drink. "Good for you, because you're cleaning this up."

_"My Integra, you seem to take perverse pleasure in making me perform maintenance duties."_

"Fuck maintenance, you just fuck shit up!"

_"Would you like me to fuck your shit up?"_

A _stiff_ drink. Integra waved over her shoulder. "You two have fun trying to kill each other."

"Eek! Sir Integra, you don't mean that!" Seras flailed her arms.

Integra dragged her along with her. "You're coming with me, Seras. Let's go have a drink."

"What? But it's ten in the morning!" Seras squawked. "And I don't drink!"

"You do now."

"I do? Sir Integra? Integra!"

Pip grabbed a dictionary and threw it into the cloud. The bats dispersed and regrouped to charge at his head. There were yells and a string of French curses.

It was a peaceful day.

xx

xx

Half past three in the afternoon, true to Dr. Trevelyan's word, Walter woke up. He felt like shite. Those slumbering princesses in the fairy tales he used to read to Integra as a child must have had mints for tongues because he was certain that something had died in his mouth. He sat up in bed, his joints creaking as he did, and fumbled for a pitcher of water on the nightstand.

He stilled. There was a hellhound on the floor.

His reflex was to dispose of it, yet he was without his wires, and on second thought he was too old for this anyway. He eyed the dog, though, as he gulped down the water. It opened three scarlet orbs which peered back at him with a degree of intelligence superior to that usually found in its kind, and stretched.

"Did Sir Hellsing let you in?"

The dog lolled its tongue and wagged its tail. It bounded to the door and pawed at the knob until it turned.

As soon as it opened there was a scream.

"ALUCARD, IF YOU TURN INTO BATS INSIDE THE HOUSE ONE MORE TIME, I SWEAR I WILL—"

The dog whined and promptly shut the door.

Walter blinked. Then he chuckled. "I guess she brought him home, after all."

The hellhound seemed to laugh with him.

xx

xx

It was after she put Alucard in a headlock, after she proceeded to punch him in the stomach when he asked if this was foreplay, after she rushed to Walter's side and hugged him, after he was introduced to Seras and Pip and Baskerville, after they had dinner, after they said their goodnights, that Integra lay in bed alone. Alucard was out walking Baskerville, which he insisted on doing every night in a bizarre show of domesticity. She fingered an unlit cigar in one hand and the royal invitation in the other.

She and Walter had talked before dinner. "I am very glad to see you well, my lady," the butler had said.

"Just so you know, Walter, I _am_ going to tease you about it," she had said.

Walter had laughed. "I would expect nothing less."

The old man regarded her affectionately, the valorous knight whom he served proudly, whom he loved as his own daughter. "Mere days and our little family has grown. Ms. Victoria and Mr. Bernadotte seem to be of an honest sort, and Baskerville is a fine if unorthodox hound." He sobered slightly. "Are you happy, my lady?"

Integra smiled softly. "I am."

"And is he happy?"

"He is," she said. "I know he is."

"The road ahead will be difficult, I imagine," Walter said gravely. "As if it had not been difficult enough already—but if there is anyone in this world who can weather it, it is you." He paused. "Have you thought about...the after?"

The waning gibbous moon was climbing up the horizon. It would be dark soon. Astounding how fast time flies. "That is a story for another time."

"Very well. But if I may be bold, my lady, there is something else that ails you."

Integra showed him the invitation. He understood.

"If you do not attend, failing to swear fealty to your new sovereign in the process, it will undermine your standing as knight of this realm. Yet if you do attend, it will be affirming Alucard's nonexistence. Crossroads, my lady. Either path is a betrayal to yourself." His monocle, however, had twinkled. "Luckily, it is a matter that can be simplified. Do you _want_ to go?"

"Certainly not," Integra said out loud.

"Certainly not what?"

_Alucard and his bloody timing._

He strode into her room in the same way, she suspected, he had years ago when he entered uninvited at the dead of night to watch the stars. As though it was _their_ room. As though he was hoping to share this bed with her hour by hour, night by night, hoarding her greedily in his icy embrace.

She made no move to hide the letter, instead handing it to him wordlessly.

He read it. His mouth twisted. "Ah." He gave it back to her. "Well."

She studied him shrewdly. His old bitterness had not yet completely ebbed; there was a shadow, almost imperceptible, that crept across his visage. But he kept his voice light. "Certainly you should go, my Integra. You are a knight, and I won't have your reputation diminished simply because they neglected to include a dead prince."

"I'm your knight," she said.

His red eyes wavered. Only slightly. "I don't plan to set foot there, anyway. I have closed those doors for good. Just promise me you will wear a beautiful dress, or even better, a fitting pair of breeches, and let me kiss you in it." They curved. "And more."

Integra emitted a noise of contemplation. "I would be dreadfully bored there by myself. And all those eyes staring at me. However will I fare?"

Alucard's tone became strained. "I'm sure you're more than capable of poking them out with a fork."

"Hmm." She held up her cigar. "Light."

He produced a match and lit it, momentarily admiring her face beyond its glow, banishing the contents, rather non-contents, of the letter from his regard. The smell of tobacco filled the air.

The cigar dipped down.

She crushed it into the paper.

A hole grew in its middle. They were suspended for several seconds, watching the ring of smoky black distort the steward's elegant script.

And then, it was when the ashes had barely landed on the bedding that he struck. He pinned her to the mattress. She met his crazed expression with a self-satisfied smirk.

"Dear, dear, it appears I have damaged the invitation. Surely I can't go without it." Her gaze never left his wild crimson eyes. "Whatever shall I do?"

"Stay with me," Alucard said—no, _panted_. "With me, here, forever and ever and ever." He kissed her clavicle, her throat, her chin, her lips. "Integra, Integra, Integra!"

"That sounds acceptable," she said, and that was the last coherent thing to come out of her mouth, except his name.

xx

xx

"Countess," he suddenly said, hours later, as they lay breathless.

"What?"

"Countess," he repeated. "It was what the man in my dream called the woman."

xx

xx

The story comes full circle.

She was roused by laughter. His laughter, but a kind she had not heard from him in a while. It was a boyish laughter, exhilarant and carefree, and it was drifting in from...outside? Her eyes fluttered, and sleepily she retrieved her glasses and pushed them on. An ungodly hour, the clock read. It was drafty in her room. She realized a window was open, and his side was empty.

"Alucard?"

"Integra," he called from out the window.

"Not again," she muttered. "We're too big for that now." She wrapped herself in a robe and padded barefooted past the billowing curtains.

He was standing on the ledge, waiting for her.

"Well, at least you've put trousers on," she said dryly. "What are you doing? If you want to see the stars we can't do it here, we won't fit."

"I'm aware," Alucard said. "And I have the most magnificent alternative."

"Which is?" she asked. He said nothing, giving her the chance to figure it out on her own, and she took in his excited grin and his precarious proximity to the precipice and put two and two together. Of all the abilities to manifest... "Huh. What can you _not_ do?"

"It's magnificent, Integra." He extended a hand. "Come join me."

Integra took it, but she was finding it hard to step out onto the ledge.

"Trust me."

She placed one foot down, then the other, and was standing in the winter breeze beside him. It was cold. She shivered. "This had better be good."

"Oh, it is. It's the best, my Integra. The absolute best." Alucard's grip on her hand was tautening. He was leaning away from the wall. His red, red eyes arrested hers. "Trust me. Do you trust me?"

Integra did not let go.

"Yes."

He was snow white and ebony black and blood red.

He fell, and she fell after him.

xx

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xx

xx

xx

xx

xx

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_**Finis.** _

xx

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* * *

FINAL NOTES

"Nessun dorma" from Giacomo Puccini's opera _Turandot_.

Très nauséabonde - Very nauseating

Faire la bête à deux dos - Making the beast with two backs

Amoureux - Lover

Thank you. Thank you all. You were the most wonderful readers ever and I cannot stress how happy I was that you enjoyed this story.

This was meant, in part, to be a homage to the _Hellsing_ we all know and love, so if you recognize some of the plot devices or dialogues, they were intentional.

Happy endings, everyone. We need them. This world needs happy endings. Perhaps you might feel this is an open ending, and you might not be wrong, but most importantly, it's a happy ending and that's what matters. So this is it. This is the end. Complete. After this, there will be several bonus chapters including but not limited to: Alucard's birthday, Pip and Seras' romance, and, uh, those are the only concrete ideas right now, but I'm sure I'll whip some up. But they'll be slow in coming, because I have _Satis_ to update and oh boy, that one will be a monster.

So say goodbye for now to Prince Alucard and Sir Hellsing and their unabashed romance. I had so much fun writing these two, I'll miss them, and in a weird way I hope you'll miss them too, because it'll mean that you loved them as much as I did. So goodbye, and may we meet again soon.


	22. Maroongrad's Contribution

This ficlet is by [maroongrad](https://www.fanfiction.net/u/2141230/maroongrad) on Fanfiction.net, a lovely person and writer who wrote this in response to a couple of reviews there that asked, surprisingly enough, about the king! Here I post it with permission. Please enjoy this beautiful piece of writing and delightfully haunting insight to a character who doesn't even have a name.

* * *

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 _By_ maroongrad

He shuffled to the dressing room, robe hanging half-off his shoulders, ineffectual valet tutting behind him. He was tired of his room, of the hangings that smelt of mouse piss and the musty bed. Huge it might be, steps needed to reach it, soft and comfortable and enormous, and it should have been disposed of years ago.

Like the Queen.

Like the Prince.

The first Queen had been...nice. Attractive enough, sufficiently noble, a good choice politically. He'd been pleased that his choice of Queen had gone so well, and then he was more pleased to find that she would be bearing him an heir.

His heir was a red-eyed monster and he was a widower within the year. But a King must marry. He looked to the circle of noblewomen that had surrounded his wife. Each was noble enough to wed, and he was at least somewhat familiar with each. A long search for a bride elsewhere, a long drawn-out courtship, was out of the question. He needed to marry quickly and create something besides a monster. And so he chose again.

He'd been warned, warned, warned that marrying her was a mistake. Her family had a long reputation for betrayal and a longer one for spite and manipulation. But she was comely, and flattering. Aged cheeks flushed a bit with color at the manipulations that flattering and comely young lady had given him. And so he'd ignored the warnings, the omens, and the whispers, and married her.

It had only been a few weeks after the wedding, and he'd caught a glimpse into the Queen's Suite and that...mirror.

He'd pieced his mind together slowly after meeting those malicious eyes on a silvered background. He was pleased, in a foggy way, that his wife had ably taken to running the kingdom, quietly effective in the background, until he was able to do so himself.

His heir was still about, somewhere in the royal wing of the castle. Heir. That...that was almost worse than the mirror. Almost. He shivered.

Better to stay in his rooms, avoiding demonic red eyes, malevolent silvered ones.

He suspected that his daily cordial, prepared by his wife for his health, was keeping him in this fog. But it was better, far better, than facing that red-eyed monster presented to him as his Heir. Or young man. Had the child grown? There was something about a wedding. How had the child grown to a man in only...it had been a few weeks...he'd seen the babe just last...when was it?

Reality was too much. He stumbled into his study, windows thrown bright to let in the light. Winter? But it was summer just yesterday. No...not winter. The snow had gone, between one blink and the next, and white and pink flowers graced the fruit trees outside his windows.

He stood in the bright light, letting it help chase the shadows from his mind, the warmth sinking into his bones. Maybe today he would refuse that cordial...try and be King again.

And then those eyes blinked at him from inside that twisted frame, glowing maliciously against the tarnished silver backing. They twisted themselves, turning into red eyes in a white face above a screaming red mouth. The screams became the clamoring of his council, wanting him to do this, fix that, solve this other, sign the papers, meet and plan and organize and deal with the dizzying and overwhelming role of leadership...and of being parent to the Devil himself.

No. No. The Council and Queen could do all that. He just wanted to stay hidden, be brought out as a puppet when a showing was needed. Alone in his rooms, where nothing changed while the world flurried by outside.

It was with an almost desperate snatch that he took his little cup of cordial, swimming in the delicate china cup with the faintest loathsome sheen of iridescent oiliness on the surface, and gulped it down.

The fog was so much better than reality.

xx

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	23. Outtake - Common Flu

xx

xx

Dr. Trevelyan set down the thermometer. "The common flu, Walter. She'll be fine. Just keep an eye on her and send word if the fever doesn't break after an hour."

"Thank you," the butler said, and the doctor made his leave.

Walter could not help but worry. Integra, at age fourteen, was still slight of stature and in his eyes still a child. He knew a common flu would hardly damage his lady, but it was not easy sitting by her side and watching her breathe shallowly through chapped lips.

"...Walter?"

He started. "My lady?"

Integra was looking blearily at him. "Is Alucard here?"

Walter stared aghast at her for a moment. Then he remembered himself and struggled to retain his composure. "No. Are you, er, expecting him?"

Integra appeared even more exasperated than she already was while sick. "He told me...he would visit this week...but then I got sick...forgot to tell..."

"Alright, don't exert yourself now," Walter placated. "It's still Tuesday. Perhaps he'll come tomorrow, when you're feeling better."

Integra looked unconvinced. "Worst...timing..."

Yes, that was what he thought.

He placated Integra until she fell asleep, and then left the room and went downstairs briefly to pick up the tea. It was only Tuesday. _But only noon,_ Walter thought unhappily. _And not as if the evening hours matter to that little shit._ On top of that, it was _cloudy_. He could feel his old man's intuition tingling and hoped it was wrong for once. He could deal with being wrong for once. He did not want to deal with a smirking, sarcastic Alucard.

Speak of the Devil and he will come knocking on your front door.

"Mr. Dornez," a maid said, "we seem to have a visitor at the gates."

Walter sent a silent scream to the universe.

On the outside he smiled serenely. "I'll see to it."

He planted himself in front of the door and waited the requisite three minutes it took for a person to cross the grounds—at a brisk pace, because this was Alucard. He counted down the seconds. _Five, four, three, two_ —

_One!_

He opened the door.

Alucard stood behind it, as expected. His hand had been preparing to knock, and it now hung awkwardly in the air, stripped of the opportunity. It took everything Walter had not to chuckle. "Your Highness."

The prince's red eyes moved from the door, to the butler, to his hand. He retracted it slowly, flexing his fingers, while tilting his head the slightest bit to the side in consideration. His lips curled. "Not bad, retainer of Hellsing," he murmured. "Nicely done."

"I don't know what you mean," Walter demurred.

"I see you have anticipated my visit. Very well, then." The prince straightened his head. "Move."

Walter was blocking the doorway, and he continued to do so. "What brings you here, Your Highness?"

For his part, Alucard kept smiling. "My desire to see Integra, of course. By the way, does she know how deplorable you are at receiving guests?"

Walter dispensed with the formalities. "Alucard, please. You're a prince."

Alucard pretended to be shocked. "Dear, dear, have you only just realized? Is the dementia kicking in?"

" _The_ prince. The _crown_ prince. Aren't you supposed to be at the castle with the courtiers breathing down your neck?"

"Why do you assume they'll be breathing?"

"Alucard!"

The prince shrugged. "They don't care what I get up to."

Walter resisted the urge to pinch the bridge of his nose. "Well, someone should."

"Integra cares," Alucard said. "She's the only one who does."

It was stated so readily, so matter-of-factly and without a stitch of affectation, that it caught Walter off balance.

The allotted time for frivolities had expired for Alucard and irritation was now visible on his face. "You're very lucky Integra is so fond of you, or something would have happened in recompense for wasting my time. Now do step aside."

"That should be my words," Walter muttered. Resigned, he did step aside.

The sixteen-year-old prince waltzed into the manor with the ease of a long-lived resident and immediately inquired after its owner. "Where is she?"

Walter closed the door and crossed his arms. "You clearly have not thought this out. What were you going to do if she was out or if she was busy?"

"I would wait, of course. So, is she those things?" Alucard narrowed his eyes. "What is keeping her?"

For probably the thousandth time, Walter damned their decision to return home.

"Integra is ill."

"Take me to her," Alucard said at once.

Walter had anticipated this. He conjured Integra's earlier expression of utter exasperation and thought it perfectly fitting for what he was going through right now. "She came down with the flu and is sleeping. So, for _her benefit,_ Your Highness," he stressed, "you should leave and reschedule this visit, as she is currently in no state to deal with you."

Alucard's visage twisted, but Walter could perceive that the prominent emotions were worry and uncertainty.

The prince finally settled on a blank mask. "I will only see her, and then I will go."

Walter sighed. That was about the best he could hope for.

He led him to Integra's bedroom, where under normal circumstances Alucard would have had no chance of setting foot. The prince crossed the austerely furnished room without noise and sat on the chair at her side. He cast his red eyes down at her. Walter stayed at the doorway. He had to admit, even from there he could sense a vague helplessness from the boy. He looked almost lost.

Alucard placed a tentative finger into the palm of Integra's left hand, which was sticking out of the sheets. He flinched. He had always enjoyed her warmth, yet this level of heat was alarming. "Is she alright?" he asked in an urgent, quiet voice. "Will she wake up? Where is the doctor?"

Trust him to overreact. "The doctor has already tended to her. It's only the common flu, Your Highness. She simply needs to get her fever down and she'll be fine." Walter paused. "Have you not ever had it before?"

The prince shook his head.

Walter nodded. Unsurprising.

It struck him then that he had forgotten the reason he had gone downstairs in the first place. The tea. Walter cursed inwardly. He eyed Alucard. It would be but a moment. Certainly, he had left Integra alone in his company plenty of times before, though they had been in far better settings. He braced himself. "Your Highness, there is a matter I have to attend to downstairs."

Alucard turned his head toward him.

"I will be back. Promptly," Walter said.

Was he imagining it, or was that a gleam in the prince's eyes?

He gnashed his teeth and moved quickly.

Alucard turned immediately back to Integra. He slid his hand fully into hers.

"Integra?"

She slept on.

Alucard gazed at her perspiring face, her chapped lips and shallow breaths. It was depressing to see her this way. He supposed it was like that time when he had suffered from the heat, not that this was something that would disappear by simply staying in the shade, or putting a cold, wet cloth on the forehead.

He realized this was the first he had seen her quite so sick. She had had the occasional sniffle, but never one amounting to this. This helplessness he was feeling was different from what he felt when she was tired or hurt. There was no offender he could punish. He could only hold her hand and assure her of his presence.

Her hand twitched. Her fingers curled around his.

"...Alucard...?"

He leaned in. "I am here."

She smiled, half awake, half in dreamland. "My prince."

She clutched his hand tight, and fell asleep once more.

Alucard stared down at her.

Slowly, he got off the chair, and moved into the bed. He lifted a knee and rested it on the mattress, did the same with the other, and found himself kneeling on the bed over Integra. He lay down, very softly, on the small available space, and curled himself against her.

Fever was fire. He was ice. He could help her feel better.

And he was gratified to hear her little sigh of comfort.

"I won't always be a prince, my Integra," he whispered. "Someday I will be king, and you will be my queen, and I will give you the world."

He promised.

He closed his eyes. It would be so lovely if he could simply fall asleep like this...

_"What do you think you're doing?"_

Ah, but technicalities.

Years later, in the privacy of his mind, Alucard acknowledged that he might have met his second death that day had he not rolled off the bed at just the right moment.

xx

xx


	24. Outtake - Alucard's Birthday

xx

xx

In winter the little prince was quieter than ever. He walked among the people who wished him dead, and in contrast, their whispers became louder and louder. It was not until his fifth winter that he learned there was such a thing called a "birthday" and that people normally celebrated this day. He overheard one of the children boasting about a grand party that had been hosted on his behalf. Later he found out from the records that his birthday was in December. But no one acknowledged it. No one hosted a party for him. And he was sure, even at that age, that no one would attend if he held his own.

His seventh winter came and went, and from then on he celebrated his death instead.

xx

xx

"Alucard, when is your birthday?"

She asked him this on a November afternoon as they curled their toes near the fireplace. Or rather, Integra curled her toes inside her wooly socks; Alucard was not cold at all, but he kept the wood burning for her. He paused his reading, and looked up at her with red, red eyes. She had a small frown on her face, which usually followed her frustration at not knowing a certain detail. His lips curved.

"My birthday, Integra?"

"Not that I didn't find out on my own," she said peevishly, "but you didn't tell me. You said you would tell me later when I asked, as if it's a big secret or some such thing, but you never did." She was starting to appear indignant, to his confusion. "Why didn't you?"

"Is it necessary?" he asked. "I don't particularly care. It's the same as any other day, Integra."

"Oh?" Integra deliberately put her book down. "Do you maintain this opinion for all birthdays?"

"Yes," Alucard said, and realized too late the pothole he had walked himself into.

Integra stood. "Then why on earth did you make all that fuss over mine?"

 _Ah_. He saw what he had done. Indeed, Integra never seemed to enjoy answers of this variety. _Does she not understand_ , he wondered with a tilt of his head, _nothing matters but her?_ She was worth more than anything he had known, including himself. Naturally he would celebrate her birthday. His, on the other hand, was a nonissue. He told her as much.

Her resulting expression was one he would not likely forget for quite a while. She looked _thunderous_. And because a storm was a beautiful thing, he admired her as she declared that his birthday was _not_ a nonissue, it _did_ matter, and she _would_ throw him a party, just as he had done for her. Her eyes were so bright and blue that he was almost inclined to agree. Yet when her words registered at last, his insides twisted. A fragile part of his heart fluttered its wings and sang, _She loves me_. At the same time a hardened, embittered part hissed, _She pities me_.

She may have heard. She said quietly, "I hope you know what you mean to me, as well as I know what I mean to you. You're my only friend, Alucard."

"You're my only," he echoed. _My only, my only_.

"Don't you want to do something? With me? It doesn't have to be grand." _Although it should be_ , Integra thought. How she hated the unfairness of it all. She continued. "We could picnic in your garden again. It'll be beautiful still."

He smiled wryly. "The tea will freeze."

"Indoors, then. Here."

"Whatever you desire, Integra," he relegated.

"That's not how it's supposed to be!" she exclaimed. But then again, things were never what they were supposed to be around Alucard. She huffed and sat back down in her chair. At least he sort of agreed.

Alucard returned his attention to his book, picking up from where he had left off.

 _. . . the sea-shore_ _—_ _that suggesting, dividing line, contact, junction, the solid marrying the liquid_ _—_ _that curious, lurking something . . ._

"Integra," he said, "you said you've been to the seashore many times."

"I have."

"Won't you describe it for me? The shore?"

Integra's face grew thoughtful. She obliged, conjuring a memory.

"It's quiet," she began. "Which would be a strange thing to say, because it's actually very noisy. The water constantly moves and its waves clash upon one another and there's never any rest. But I say quiet, because it's the quietness that comes over you as you realize that there's nothing in front of you but this blue water for days and days, and there's nothing stopping you but your common sense from flinging yourself into it and letting it take you to places unimaginably far." She laughed. "I remember my father touched my forehead when I told him so. I don't think he understood."

Alucard thought he understood. It must be somewhat akin to the sensation of facing death.

"Why, Alucard? Have you never been to sea before?"

He shook his head no.

"I'll take you there," she said determinedly. "Someday we'll go on an excursion to the beach. We'll pick a cloudy day and take a boat out and you'll see for yourself, how blue the water is—it'll be an adventure. Just you and me."

He found he liked that idea very much.

A few weeks later, his fourteenth birthday arrived. It was accompanied, however, with a blizzard that raged white and blinding. He knew it would be impossible for her to come. The prince pressed his face to the window, watching the world disappear, and for the first time in his life he resented the storm. It took Integra away from him. He did not care about his birthday. Yet he did care that Integra had cared about it, and a very, very, very deep part of his heart, the part that still sounded like a child, cried out for the only person who would have sincerely wished him a happy one.

Then there was a knock on the door.

And suddenly there was—

There was— _Integra_. Standing in the doorway. Integra, standing there, covered from head to toe in specks of snow. As though she had been out in a bloody blizzard.

"What," he spat, shock turning into anger at her sheer, utter, foolish _recklessness_ , "were you _thinking?"_

"That I'd like to melt. Move," Integra said, the cold clipping her words. She brushed past him, sending loose flakes flying everywhere, and headed straight toward the fireplace. Alucard was at her heels, grabbing a blanket and throwing it over her as she planted herself in front of the pitiful flames, which he swiftly fed a couple of logs. Then he rounded on her.

"You stupid, _stupid_ girl!"

Integra regarded him condescendingly, a feat only she could accomplish while looking up at him through foggy glasses and shivering. "I deplore your estimation of me. Did you think I wouldn't be here because it snowed?"

"That is a buggering blizzard out there and you could have died," he snarled.

"Language," she chided. She rolled her eyes. "It wasn't that bad. The wheels got stuck just the once and the horses pulled through in the end."

" _Foolish_ girl."

"Shut up and sit down."

He obeyed, even as he broiled. This had to be, he lamented, some kind of cosmic retribution. Before he had met Integra he had not known how infuriating it could be to care for a person. The fact that people were easy to kill, whether by his hands or by something as trifling as snow, had never irked him so strongly. He jabbed at the fire with a poker. All this for a meaningless day.

Integra glanced impatiently at him. "Why are you sitting so far away?"

"It'll be counterproductive," he said, referring to his innate coldness.

"I'll be warm enough for both of us." She took the hand that was poking the fire and tugged. Alucard dropped the poker. He had been squeezing it hard enough for it to leave an indentation in his palm. Their shoulders met, and Integra swept her decidedly warm thumb over the discolorment.

"Silly prince. It takes more than a snowstorm to do away with me," the twelve-year-old boasted.

And at that he let out a snort.

"But of course even the wildest winds will die down for our mighty Sir Integral Hellsing," Alucard intoned, making her laugh. He pulled the blanket over his other shoulder, despite already feeling very cozy without it.

The two curled against each other.

"Happy birthday," she said.

The little prince—who was in truth no longer little—of white and black and red was nevertheless sure that there was magic in her words. How else could there be light diffusing in his sunless soul?

"I have brought you a present, but you must close your eyes."

"Will you kiss me?"

Integra turned bright pink, to his everlasting delight. " _No_ , you idiot. It's a proper present. Close your eyes!"

"Bossy," he clucked. Yet he complied. He always did.

Alucard heard her searching her cloak for the mysterious present, and he could not help but be curious. Almost, daresay, excited.

Then something covered his ear, and he jumped.

From the depths of the object sounded a roar. It was garbled yet violent, tossing and turning, not unlike the rush of a stream. He struggled to name it, when it struck him— _waves_. This must be what his books had tried to describe, when they spoke of ocean waves. How clamorous! And from beyond the tide he heard her voice, and he crossed the sea to return to her side.

"I thought that since you've never been to the sea, I could bring a little piece of it to you."

He opened his eyes, and took the conch shell in his hands. It was large and smooth and mottled. He placed the opening to his ear once more, and how uncanny it was, that it could produce such a sound. Though logically he knew it was most likely the air flowing within that made the noise, it did not make the gift any less marvelous.

"Do you like it?"

"Do I like it?" Alucard repeated. He cradled it close, hiding his trembling hands. "This seals it. We'll take a boat around the world."

Integra laughed again, and it was far lovelier than the ocean in the shell.

"We'll conquer the world yet."

xx

xx

"Well," Integra announced, "this is it."

"This is it?" Alucard asked.

"This is it!" Seras squealed.

"Who the fuck goes to the beach in fucking December?" Pip muttered.

"We do, and be quiet, Bernadotte, you invited yourselves here."

"Oh, look, seagulls!" Seras exclaimed.

"Not enough that every aspect of our daily lives is weird. Our vacation has to be bloody weird, too. _Charmant_." The Frenchman set their luggage down and propped an umbrella.

"Come on, Pip. Let's go feed the seagulls!" Seras dragged her husband toward the flock of birds, which scattered when Baskerville sprang out, barking madly. A seagull flew into Pip's face. A string of curses decked the air.

Integra, with an unlit cigar between her teeth, watched them have fun, then crossed her arms and turned to Alucard expectantly.

"It's wet," Alucard said.

"It's the _ocean_ , Alucard."

"And what's all this?"

"Oh, I don't know, sand?"

"I know it's sand," he said petulantly, "but why is there so much of it?"

Integra raised her eyes to the heavens.

He sat down on the sand under the umbrella. Seeing such a vast expanse of water directly in front of him made him sulky. Not so long ago, they had tested the veracity of the vampiric inability to cross running water. The corners of Integra's lips still twitched whenever it was mentioned.

In the waves, Seras and Pip were having a water fight that bode sore throats and runny noses in the near future. Baskerville had succeeded in catching a seagull between his jaws and looked like an ambling mass of seaweed with his bedraggled fur.

"Whatever happened to just the two of us?"

"You should have kept your big fanged mouth shut, then. As soon as Seras got wind of it she went on and on about how she hadn't been to the beach in ages, and then what was I supposed to do?"

"You're too lenient with the girl," Alucard groused.

"She's family. I'm allowed to be lenient with family," Integra said haughtily. "God knows I'm forever lenient with _you_."

"At least the butler had the tact to stay at home." Walter had, in fact, declined the trip, citing joints.

Alucard scooped up a handful of sand. It was cold and sticky.

"Perfect for making sand castles," the knight said, and sat down beside him to scoop up some of her own.

The knight and the vampire spent time at their leisure, gathering the sand into a misshapen mound, to which they added smaller misshapen mounds, and for the finishing touch she stuck her cigar into the center. He unearthed a few shells ("Pitiful," he pronounced) and plastered them on the exterior. They leaned back and assessed their creation.

"Is this our castle, then?"

"It is," she said solemnly.

"What a poorly constructed castle, my Integra."

"I disagree. The base is solid and the turrets are sturdy. It will never fall apart."

"All things are ephemeral," he said.

"That doesn't mean they can't be prolonged," she said.

"Oh?" He slid an arm around her waist and pulled her into his lap. "Will you cheat?"

"Infidelity, my dear?" she teased.

"Only to the principles of nature, my dearest."

Integra twirled a finger around a lock of midnight hair. "In that case, though it will be against my integrity as a knight, I find that I am not above cheating."

He blinked his red, red eyes languidly, and kissed the slope of her neck.

"It won't do for integrity to be tarnished," Alucard said, and his tone was mournful.

She twisted her head and he lifted his. Their lips met. Soft, wet caresses enunciated words that were not to be spoken. She pierced her tongue and the sudden flow of blood had him clawing at the pearls of her blouse.

There was a shriek. Pip had a crab hanging on the end of his braid. Seras burst into a fit of giggles.

Their kisses turned lazy. She took a breath.

"If nothing else suffices, perhaps we could simply burn out like stars."

"Like stars," he echoed, and was peaceable.

They stared out at the sea in silence, at its greyish blue, boundless promise.

"Happy birthday, Alucard."

"We still have yet to find a boat," he reminded her.

"Give it time," she said. "The world will wait until we do."

xx

xx

* * *

Walt Whitman, "Sea-Shore Fancies."

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [The Ouroboros](https://archiveofourown.org/works/9049342) by [WyrmLivvy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WyrmLivvy/pseuds/WyrmLivvy)




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